I enabled the trial of this Google Hangout madness a few days ago. I'm not sure what Google is trying to accomplish exactly, but if it's driving their technically competent users to other services, they are succeeding. mIRC, ICQ, AIM, MSN Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger were all a part of my life at one point, but I shed them for Google Talk. Now that they're trying to ruin IM, perhaps it's time to shop around yet again.