Google Announces It’s Killing Google Hangouts In November

Image: Google

In February, Google retired Google Hangouts for Workspace users, and today it has commenced the migration of personal Hangouts users to chat at no cost. The shutdown announcement was posted on Google’s Blog, and it said those still using the Hangouts mobile app will see a prompt to move to Chat.

Furthermore, according to the post, those who use Hangouts on the web will start getting prompt to move to Chat until July. However, Hangouts will not be available on its desktop site after November. The search engine giant said it would send a reminder to users not less than one month before it starts pointing them to Chat.

Google knew firsthand that it would not be easy to make users switch to Chat; hence it decided to roll out a few features to entice them to migrate. The features include making direct calls, creating in-line threads in Spaces (the rebrand of Rooms) and sharing and viewing multiple images.

In October 2020, Google announced that Google Chat would be available for all to use. They also said users could continue using Hangouts or upgrade to Google Chat. They are to take advantage of the benefits of Chat.

Google further gave the benefit of moving to Chat which includes connecting and collaborating with others in a far better way. Users were promised the ability to edit documents, slides and sheets side-by-side editing – a seamless way of collaborating while chatting.

In addition, the company says the switch to Chat promises more fun to users, whether using emojis with skin-tone selections, rich text editing, mentions to alert a group member within a group chat or even sending a GIF from the array of GIFs.

The tech giant said Google Chat comes with Spaces, a place dedicated to topic-based collaboration to add to the already juicy package. In Spaces, different users in Groups and teams can collaborate effectively with documents, files etc., within the platform. Finally, the Chat is now integrated with Gmail with the ‘View in Gmail’ feature, making it easy to Chat while still in Gmail inbox, Spaces and Meets.

Launched in 2013 as an in-place upgrade to Google Talk, Google Hangouts became Android’s default messaging service. The app drew a whopping 5 billion downloads! As time went by, Hangouts handled Android SMS duties, but in 2016 the launch of Google Allo saw a decline in the use of the service. The Google Hangouts shutdown did not start today; it has been hanging in the balance since 2018.

When the company first made the call and after about four years (precisely in March 2022), Workspace customers (the premium version of Google apps) noticed Hangouts’ removal. But regular consumers could still switch between Google Chat and Hangouts.

If you are a Hangouts user, do not worry because Google will automatically transfer your existing conversation to Chat. You are also open to the option of using the Google Takeout service to download a copy of your Hangouts data before its November official shutdown date.

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#Google Hangouts
#Google Chat