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Google's official Email service Gmail recently crossed 1-billion users escalating the expectations of Google. Adding another new feat to their ongoing success, they have now added peer-to-peer connection facility to their messaging, voice and video calling app Google Hangouts. This update has been rolled out across all platforms (Andriod, iOS, and Web) and is designed so as to improve the voice calling experience of not one but all users. This feature is already in use by Skype (video chat and voice call services).
Prior rolling out the update, the search giant kept notifying its users about the same and just last weekend, it officially confirmed of the release. The company understands that this feature isn't utilized all the time, but in its defense said, "To improve call quality and speed, Hangouts will route audio and video over a peer-to-peer connection when possible." The inclusion of P2P protocol allows the user to directly connect through and reroute the call to the recipient or caller instead of passing through Google servers again and again which improves quality and reduces the overall time.
Though this new feature will surely improve the overall voice-calling feature, but the biggest drawback of this protocol is that direct communication discloses the IP addresses of all the participating users i.e, both the parties can view each other's IP address using which they can also get an idea of their approximate location.
This is certainly scary as if an attacker gets hold of the IP address, it becomes easier for them to get access to the system using their illegal methods and performing DDoS attacks on the relevant IP address. Tech giant Google reveals no information as to how it handles the IP address in such bulk quantities and even Microsoft has now stopped disclosing IP address of anyone unless there is a crucial need.
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