Google Hangouts has already been phased out and is being replaced by Google Chat, the company’s most recent messaging service for consumers and businesses. Earlier this year, the app was removed from both the Google Play store and the App Store. Google Hangouts on the web will now be upgraded to Google Chat as the final step in completely replacing Google Hangouts — the messaging service that debuted in 2013 as a Google+ feature — with Google Chat, the default messaging app for Google Workspace users. According to the company, the transition will begin on November 1.
The Google Apps Team sent Gadgets 360 an email announcing the upcoming upgrade from Hangouts on the web to Chat on the web. “We’re emailing you because some of your conversations or portions of conversations will not automatically migrate from Hangouts to Chat,” read the email. You can check your inbox for Google communication. If you want to keep your Hangouts conversations, the company recommends that you “use Google Takeout and easily download your data before January 1, 2023, when Hangouts data will be deleted.”
The web Hangouts and platform conversations will be available in Hangouts until November 1, 2022. If you delete a conversation in Google Hangouts, the corresponding content in Google Chat may be deleted as well, so “don’t delete any conversations you want to keep.” If you do not wish to use Chat, you may do so at any time. “You can also delete conversations in Chat or delete your Google account entirely,” but doing so will erase all data in that account.
Google says it is migrating to Chat because it “offers closer integration with other Google Workspace products as well as modern features.” Google Chat’s modern features include a gif picker and Spaces, which is a dedicated place for topic-based collaboration, similar to Twitter.
Google removed the Hangouts app from the Google Play store and the Apple App Store earlier this year in an effort to prevent new users from downloading the defunct chat app on iOS and Android devices. Google Hangouts’ transition to Google Chat was first reported in November 2018. In October 2020, the company began transitioning Workspace users from Hangouts to Meet.
