Using Hangouts has kind of eliminated the conference call problem for me. Audio quality is great, you can see who is speaking or know who wants to speak if the mute icon disappears.
You seem to be trying to make an anecdote about personal use.
This website is mimicking corporate conference calls.. and yes, companies take regular phone calls because they are collectively aware that expecting everyone to contact their business using Google Hangouts would be silly.
I dunno, we used Hangouts at Google and it was fine for meetings, though it did have some enhancements on top. It was possible to call in or out, though I never saw that feature used except "I wonder what happens if..."
Ultimately the problems with these meetings involve the social problems. Someone is absorbed in thought so they don't notice that a more quiet person in another room wants to talk. They point at the screen, not realizing that the other office can't see that. They point using their mouse cursor not realizing that it's too small to see on the screen. Or the more mundane; not having an agenda, inviting too many people, not inviting enough people, etc.
Audio quality is variable. Sometimes there's serious lag. Screenshare often gets stuck. Sometimes Hangouts (well, now it's Meet) goes split-brain and some people join to find no one there, even though everyone else can see each other. Browser support is hideously narrow. Unmute sometimes doesn't work.
Oh, and the worst part: There are all these pesky humans involved!
Seriously, most of the stuff satirized in this art piece are human factors, or at least factors that have not particularly been changed by Hangouts and its ilk.
We get echoes when someone's mic is too close to their speakers, or doesn't have echo cancellation, etc. If you get echoes, there's someone who needs to mute. :-)
To me this is just conference call by another name, with some nice extra features like video and screensharing. We still have people dialing in from mobile, cars, using a variety of devices, forgetting to mute/unmute, having background noise, bad connections, putting the conference mic in a bad location.
I remember those traditional conference phones usually having really good microphone quality and noise-reduction. You still have to invest in that gear with hangouts/Zoom/others.
Yes, especially at large, non-technical companies. Technically, we are using WebEx, but most remote folks are dialing in to a phone number versus using audio on their laptop.
I'm in at least one meeting a day that has dial in people.
At large technical companies as well unfortunately. It’s insane. never knowing who is talking, who is on the line. And that’s not talking about audio quality
There is a whole political/social angle as well. Some people are concall Jedi who can really wield power effectively on calls and dominate meetings better than in person.
Big companies still do them a lot. You also avoid the issue of people not being able to figure their computer audio out. They drive me crazy though. I usually call into conference calls via Hangouts.
Even with Skype or hangout, someone at home always has a bandwidth issue so no-cam, also constant echo issues and typing sound almost triggers PTSD for me.
I've lost count how many meetings I been in where I completely lost what the speaker was saying because someone was clickly clacking on their keyboard the whole time. The requisite "Whomever is typing please mute yourself!", never works because the typist is never paying attention.
There should be an app that logs you into your mandatory conference calls so you can get the checkmark for attending, but completely isolates the user. Then, when you suddenly have to talk, and someone pings you, it will call you, and while its ringing it will play a pre-recorded, 'Oh damn, I think I'm having connection issues, can you repeat the question?'
Hangouts is a specific tool requiring accounts with a specific corporation. My employers do not use Google to back their services, so it's a non-starter.
Phone calls, on the other hand, can work from just about anywhere using any service provider. Makes it much more useful than Hangouts.
This website is mimicking corporate conference calls.. and yes, companies take regular phone calls because they are collectively aware that expecting everyone to contact their business using Google Hangouts would be silly.