Loyal users of Google Hangouts will soon say farewell to the tech giant's toughest chat app after Google announced it was discontinuing Hangouts, which will no longer be available after November 2022. By then users will be migrated to Google Chat or the Chat feature in Gmail.
Hangouts Conversations to be Carried Over to Chat
The Hangouts web client will remain available until November, and the company indicated that users will have "at least" one month of warning before the platform begins automatic redirections to the Chat website. For those who are actively using Hangouts, Google promises that conversations will be automatically carried over to its newer app. Google's Takeout service can also be used to download a copy of your data, Engadget reported.
Google has been slowly Hangouts was not surprising. And while it never enjoyed the popularity of other instant messaging apps, Hangouts, which has been recently renamed Meet, had its devout users.
For Hangouts users in Gmail, Google says it won't start notifying users to transition to Chat until July.
Google Chat and GChat (or Google Talk) are different. GChat was discontinued earlier this month. Hangouts was originally positioned to succeed GChat, but Google had since altered its strategy for instant messaging. Google first revealed plans to migrate users from Hangouts to Chat in 2018 and made Hangouts free for all users in 2020.
New Features to be Rolled Out in Chat
To motivate users into making them switch to Chat, Google says it's introducing a few new features in Chat, including the ability to make direct calls, create in-line threads in Spaces (formerly Rooms), as well as share and view multiple images.
In a blog post, product manager Ravi Kanneganti said the shift to Google Chat "opens up new and better ways to connect and collaborate," Kanneganti added, "Users can edit Docs, Slides or Sheets with side-by-side editing, making it easier to collaborate while continuing the conversation.
Google Chat also includes Spaces, a dedicated place for topic-based collaboration. Groups and teams can share ideas, work on documents, and manage files and tasks, all from a single location. And, Gmail offers an integrated view, which makes it easier to use Chat with your Gmail inbox, Spaces, and Meet.
Google is consolidating these services, from Google Chat to Google Docs and Meet, onto Gmail.
They're also available to enterprise customers as Google Workspace, which supports accounts with custom email addresses and cloud computing capabilities.
Google Hangouts was first created as a multi-platform instant-messaging app operating for its defunct social network platform Google+. In 2013, it spun out as a separate instant messaging app but failed to gain traction against other instant messaging players, such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Telegram.
Google began porting Workspace customers over to Meet and Chat from Hangouts in 2020. Gmail users were also asked to transition last year before Hangouts would be discontinued forever. Chat will be Google's primary messaging platform after November this year.
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