The new Google Hangouts app for Android and iOS is the best messaging service Google’s produced yet, but one thing that will probably prevent it from taking off is its lack of SMS support.

If you tried the Hangouts yesterday you probably noticed the amount of people you can talk to is sparse. That’s because Hangouts only uses Google+ to connect to other humans so all of your friends would have to sign up for Google+ before you can use Hangouts to send them a message.

The dearth of people on Google+ probably means that Hangouts isn’t quite ready to be your go-to messaging app quite yet, however, Google’s Community Manager says SMS integration is coming to Hangouts soon.

Google’s Community Manager for Hangouts and Chat, Dori Storbeck, posted the news of Google Hangouts on her Google+ page yesterday. In the comments for her post she broke the news that SMS integration is on its way:

“Yes, SMS integration is coming soon – it is one of our most requested features!”

A timeframe on when the SMS feature will be released was not given, but hopefully its soon. Google Hangouts only integrates messaging from Google’s GTalk, Voice, Hangouts, and Google+ Messenger into one mega-app, but once you can use it to send messages to anyone’s smartphone (via SMS) Google will have a serious iMessage-killer in its arsenal.

• SourceGoogle+