Google Hangouts, the text, video and voice chat app built into Gmail, is finally shutting down today. As announced earlier this year, Google Hangouts is switching users to Google Chat, the company’s Slack-like instant messaging app for businesses.
As of today, November 1, the Google Hangouts web app is no longer available. This was the last Hangouts offer available to users. The Android and iOS apps died in July of this year.
Hangouts certainly had a slow death, with Google allowing users to migrate to Chat in 2021. The company announced in June 2022 that it would prompt Hangout users to go to Gmail or chat in the app.
While most messages and contacts will be transferred automatically, not all data will be migrated to Google Chat. The company notes that users should use Google Takeout to download and save a copy of their data. Users have until January 2023 to keep their Hangouts data.
Hangouts began as a feature on Google+ before becoming a standalone app. The messaging service had 5 billion downloads on the Google Play Store.
While Chat may never completely replace Hangouts, it does offer additional features for group conversations as well as security and collaboration tools such as Spaces and other users to edit docs, slides or sheets. . Chat users can also send GIFs and use @mentions to notify anyone in the group.
Google has previously said that chat is a better way for users to connect with others. Back in June, Google Chat product manager Ravi Kanneganti wrote in an official blog, “As we take this final step to bring the rest of Hangouts users into Chat, we hope to create a powerful way for users to build and collaborate on Chat.” Will appreciate our continued investment in creating the space.”
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