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Change is an inevitable part of life, and for those of us who welcome Google products and services into our lives, we sure get a lot of it. Then again, just because Google has a habit of killing things off doesn't mean it's necessarily swift about it, and for literally years now we've been reading the writing on the wall for Hangouts. Now as the push to Chat moves through its final phases, Google's taking a big step towards putting Hangouts down for good and delisting the app for both Android and iOS
The life and death of Hangouts: A Google tragedy
Or: A Hangouts retrospective on the eve of its retirement
The transition from Hangouts to Google Chat is now happening in earnest, with many even reporting that their group conversations have moved between the two platforms. It's just a matter of time until Hangouts itself is retired, so let's take a moment to look back at Google's most successful — and, perhaps, most ignored — messaging platform.
Hangouts group conversations will start showing up in Google Chat ahead of next year's changeover
Plus you can add and remove people from group conversations in Google Chat
Hangouts has managed to stick around for an awful long time, but Google finally announced that the migration to Chat will begin early next year. As the big day draws closer, the company is working to make the transition easier by allowing chats in Hangouts to show up seamlessly in Google Chat — as well as improving the group conversation experience in the app.
Google Chat now has read receipts, to the joy of some and the dismay of others
Android Police knows whether or not you read this post
Google rebranded Hangouts Chat to Google Chat earlier this year, and since then, the company has been working on making it a more attractive offering with new additions like a dark theme. Last month, we learned that read receipts would be coming to the platform, and wouldn't ya know it, now the feature is starting to roll out right on schedule.
Hangouts Chat following rebranded Google Meet, becoming Google Chat
I want to get off Mr. Bones' Wild (Marketing) Ride
Google announced last year that the Hangouts service we know and love would be winding down, but two new business-oriented tools took its name — Hangouts Meet (video conferencing) and Hangouts Chat (room-based messaging). However, Hangouts Meet officially became Google Meet earlier this week, and now the Chat application will receive the same treatment.
Google confirms Hangouts Meet is now Google Meet
An unceremonious rebrand drops the association with Google's beleaguered chat platform
In a blog post this morning, Google confirmed that Hangouts Meet is no longer a Hangouts product, and will simply be known as Google Meet. The post, which lays out Google Meet's extensive security and privacy credentials, makes no mention of the change, but refers to the product throughout as Google Meet. Similarly, the Meet support pages have almost all been updated with language calling the service Google Meet, where they previously said Hangouts Meet.
Google has so far had a love-hate relationship with messaging services, as it threw several of them against the wall, but only a few stuck, and that too not for long. But this didn’t deter the company from renewing its efforts to make another attempt, this time for businesses. A report by The Information suggests that Google could unify its existing communication services into a workplace-oriented app to stand against Slack and Microsoft Teams.
Google is delaying the shutdown of its longtime internet protocol chat and call app, Hangouts. G Suite users were originally told that Hangouts would be retired starting in October. Now, the deadline for G Suite customers to move has now been pushed back to "no sooner than June 2020."
If you read the title of this post and didn't really understand what it was about until you saw the screenshot, you're not alone. Most of us on the team had to do a double check when we caught the news because we didn't immediately recall what this web notification widget really was. But now that we do, we're heartbroken about the news... not!
In March 2017, Google announced that Hangouts would split into Meet and Chat apps, kicking off what has been a long, slow road to shutdown for the original version of the platform. Almost two years later, we now have an official timetable for the winding-down of the well-used service as Google attempts to wrestle a bigger share of the team communication market away from competitors like Slack. The timeline begins with the slow transition of G Suite users from classic Hangouts to Chat and Meet this year, followed by a consumer transition, which will likely begin late in 2020.
There has been a whirlwind of rumors around Google's messaging strategy over the past few days. First we heard that Hangouts might be shutting down, with a Google product lead refuting the claims, then a report came out that Allo is also shutting down. Google has now published a blog post to set the record straight, and it seems the rumors were mostly true.
Yesterday it was reported that Google was planning to sunset Hangouts sometime in 2020. However, according to Scott Johnston, director of product management and realtime comms product lead for G Suite (i.e., the guy who runs Hangouts at Google), that isn't the case. Johnston says there have been "no decisions made about when Hangouts will be shut down." Furthermore, we're told current Hangouts users will be upgraded to Hangouts Chat and Meet.
Google has just revealed a host of new features for customers who use G Suite to organize their businesses. The additions are wide-ranging, covering areas such as security and productivity across products like Drive, Gmail, and Hangouts.
At Google I/O earlier this year, the company officially introduced refreshed Material Design guidelines along with new theming tools. This was consistent with new visual elements that had already been creeping into Google products like the new Gmail, with Chrome soon to be extensively reworked, too. Hangouts Chat is G Suite's answer to Slack, and it's now getting some new Material tweaks as well.
One of the key issues facing any business is making sure the technology and services you use facilitate easy collaboration, both internally and externally. Thanks to new integrations in Hangouts Meet and Google Calendar, G Suite users should find it easier than ever to have meetings with users of other platforms.
Today is a big day for G Suite customers. Not only did Hangouts Chat finally launch, but Google is adding some new features to other core programs in its office productivity suite. This is all, of course, to help teams respond to their business needs faster by giving them better, easier ways to manage projects.
Almost a full year ago, Google decided to split Hangouts into two entities: Hangouts Meet and Hangouts Chat. The former became available pretty quickly, but the latter took its sweet time to arrive. Hangouts Chat is a messaging service for teams, much like Slack or Microsoft Teams, and it's free for current G Suite users.
It's time for the next installment of "The Messaging Mess," an unintentional comedy series from Google. After focusing on Allo as a consumer messaging platform, Google has taken to removing features from Hangouts. At the same time, it's launched a pair of business-oriented Hangouts services known as Meet and Chat. However, only Meet is generally available. Starting today, Meet has chat, but it's not Hangouts Chat. It's all so simple.
After the announcement of Duo and Allo, the newest in a long line of Google messaging apps, Google made it clear that Hangouts would be re-positioned for corporate use. Last month, a new 'Meet by Google Hangouts' app appeared on the iOS App Store, revealing that a major reworking for Hangouts was nearing completion. Now, Google has officially announced Hangouts Meet and Hangouts Chat.