There are volunteer programmers working on this. They are working on it in their free time while having day jobs, and having not attempted similar projects previously. While I think that offering financial incentive is a great idea, I don't think it addresses their stuck point (unless you could find a way to raise enough to hire someone experienced to solve the problem).

For an idea of what its like to take on a volunteer public good project, have a look at this post. I anticipate that they'll succeed in getting the alpha launched within the next month or two. If you know any programmers who are experienced with the Google Hangout interface and/or team leadership positions and want to point them at the group to help, that would likely speed things up.