Update: Google might not be (fully) killing Hangouts after all. Instead, it will be launching consumer versions of Hangouts Meet and Chat and eventually move users of the “classic” Hangouts to Hangouts Meet and Chat. A Google spokesperson sent us the following statement:
“In March 2017, we announced plans to evolve classic Hangouts to focus on two experiences that help bring teams together: Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet. Both Chat and Meet are available today for G Suite customers and will be made available for consumer users, too. We have not announced an official timeline for transitioning users from classic Hangouts to Chat and Meet. We are fully committed to supporting classic Hangouts users until everyone is successfully migrated to Chat and Meet.”
Original story follows.
Google will soon be killing Hangouts, the company’s infamous messaging app. 9to5Google reports that the company will be shutting down Hangouts in 2020.
The app, which has long been neglected by the company, still resides in the new Gmail. The mobile apps for the service, on the other hand, continue to show sign of age. Google will reportedly keep the Hangouts brand alive with enterprise-focused Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet apps available through G Suite.
Google has already tried a bunch of other messaging apps since Hangouts, and it almost became a running joke. The company still makes Allo, which never really took off, and it has recently started investing in RCS, with the new Chat/Android Messages app, which acts almost like Android’s iMessage.
With Google (hopefully) continuing to invest into RCS and Chat/Android Messages, it’s clear there is no need for Hangouts or even Allo, and the company taking the service down makes a lot of sense. I’m just not sure why it is waiting till 2020 to kill it off, though.
Tagged with Android Messages, Chat, Google, Google Hangouts, RCS