As someone who pays Google thousands of dollars a month for Google Drive for Business (Gsuite rebrand was moronic), I am very disappointed that an essential tool we relied on has been discontinued- Hangouts on Air.
Hangouts on Air was fantastic because you could have a Google Hangout with 25 live streaming participants and an unlimited audience on YouTube watching. We used this for many company meetings for leadership to discuss the state of the company with our couple of hundred employees.
Youtube has nothing to replace it. This is an immense disappointment and makes me consider moving to Microsoft as they do a much better job of not pulling the rug out from under customers.
P.S. – my single favorite thing about basecamp / 37 signals is that they have kept each previous version of BC live. I use the newest version for most projects, but it is very convenient to have some old projects on BC 1 and 2. This long term reliability is the major reason I have used them for 8+ years now. I highly recommend all other SAAS providers to take note of this practice.
It’s called Chat for chat and Meet for Video and Livestream for simulcast.