Google (News - Alert) has taken the training wheels off its three-month-old social network and has opened it up to the public. Google+, once an invitation-only service, has now graduated from beta and offers a host of new features, including major upgrades to its Hangouts group videoconferencing service.

The nine added features, detailed in a blog post by Google’s Senior Vice President of Engineering, Vic Gundotra, take Google+ up to a total of 100 features, setting the stage for what looks like a lengthy battle between the new social network and established power Facebook (News - Alert).

Perhaps Gundotra's biggest news is that Hangouts is now compatible with mobile devices, enabling users to video chat with one or more friends while on-the-go. Not surprisingly, the app is only available for Android (News - Alert) mobile devices running version 2.3 and later. However, Google said that an iOS version is coming “soon.”

In addition, Google+ users can now broadcast and record their video conferencing sessions. Although the maximum number of participants will still be set at 10, an unlimited number of users can watch the live or recorded broadcast. This should be a great complementary feature for when Google launches its business-related platform later this year.

Other additions to Google+ include screen sharing, a sketchpad, incorporation of Google Docs and the ability to identify “hangouts” by topic. Gundotra said that these features are still “under construction,” but can be toyed with while Google cleans out all the cobwebs.

Google didn't forget about the developers, either. The company said that it is making its Hangouts APIs available to everyone, which should allow for the creation of some interesting games and other integrated apps.

And the 100th feature? “You’ve been asking for it, and we’ve been busy building it, so today we’re bringing Google’s search expertise to Google+,” Gundotra wrote. “Just type what you’re looking for into the Google+ search box, and we’ll return relevant people and posts, as well as popular content from around the Web.”

Truth be told, the rollout of the new features is more exciting news than the public opening of the network itself. After all, the move from beta was inevitable, and anyone who wanted to get their hands on an invitation had no problem doing so over the last few weeks.

The social network's new video conferencing features– along with its hallmark “Circles” offering– are nice differentiators for Google+, and should inspire some chronic Facebook users to at least take a test drive of the new service.