Google Hangouts has been on its deathbed for quite a while now, and on Monday, June 26th, the Mountain View, California-based company announced that it would start migrating Hangouts users to ‘Chat,’ before ultimately killing off the platform in November 2022.
Google Chat includes ‘Spaces,’ a dedicated place “for topic-based collaboration,” alongside the ability for users to edit Docs, Slides and Sheets in a collaborative way. According to the company, mobile Hangouts users would now start seeing a prompt asking them to upgrade to Chat in Gmail or the Chat app. “Similarly, people who use the Hangouts Chrome extension will be asked to move to Chat on the web or install the Chat web app,” reads Google’s blog post about the change.
Chat also offers a more integrated experience with Google Workspace, the company’s suite of productivity apps. Additionally, Google says that it will continue to work on Chat and add features like direct calling, in-line threading in Spaces and the ability to share and view multiple images, in the coming months.
The company says that user chats and conversations would automatically migrate to Chat, making it easy to pick up where you left off, though users can download their chat history by following the instructions here.
Google has been gradually phasing out Hangouts since 2020 in favour of the updated Google Chats platform, and the once-beloved messaging app’s final days are near.
Image credit: Google
Source: Google
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