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Google Chat finally adds a feature that basically every other messaging app had for years
Voice messages come to the platform 11 years after WhatsApp
Google Chat is the company’s not-so-popular chat app, coming in as the official substitute for Google Hangouts in the Workspace suite. It is perfectly suited for messaging your Gmail contacts informally, or discussing things in an SMS-like format instead of several emails sent back and forth. However, Chat is rudimentary and lacking several modern-day amenities we may take for granted in our favorite messaging apps. Support for voice notes is one such feature, and Google just announced it is finally headed for release in the Chat app.
Google kills Album Archive today, the last remnants of Hangouts
You could view images and videos shared via Hangouts in Album Archive, among other files
A few weeks ago, Google sent a scary-sounding email to some of its account holders. The company warned that its “Album Archive” would be discontinued soon, and that you would have to back up any data from it that you want to retain. Reading on in the mail, it becomes clear that this mostly only affects some images and videos you’ve sent via Google’s defunct messaging service Hangouts, and doesn’t have anything to do with Google Photos. The July 19 shutdown date has now arrived, so if you want to see what data you’ve got in your Album Archive and if you’d like to export it, now is your last chance.
You can now mark the shutdown of Google Hangouts on your calendar
This is the last Hangouts holdout before Google Chat takes over
The end of the road for the aging Google Hangouts messaging service has been dreary and, perhaps, overdrawn. The former all-in-one text and video chat app had been supposedly supplanted twice over by the intergenerational Allo and Duo before Google Chat and Meet eventually came to the fore. But now, we finally have a date of when we can actually say goodbye to the service.
Google Hangouts stares down extinction as mobile users are finally forced to Chat
Stop, stop, it's already dead!
While Google pushed Workspace users to start using Chat back in March, those of us with free, personal Gmail accounts have had the opportunity to continue using Hangouts, armed with the knowledge that the end is, indeed, nigh. Well, fellow Hangouts crusaders, the end times have finally arrived. Not only will the app not make it through the end of the year before it's shut down, but mobile users might not make it through the day before they're prompted to switch to Chat.
Google Workspace users will face Chat migration from Hangouts in March
A month to go before the chatocalypse
Gather 'round, Hangouts fans — the day you all knew was coming is near. Google has been slowly sunsetting one of its many messaging attempts, with Chat (the service, not the RCS backend) serving as a replacement. As we continue to roll into 2022, there's not much time left in the Hangouts transition timeline. Today's update from Google provides us with some hard dates for when users will be shuffled off into the world of Chat.
Hangouts users are taking their Google Chat transition frustrations out on the app's Play Store listing
Several missing features have left plenty of people confused
Like it or not, the death of Hangouts is truly underway. Earlier today, we reported on the ongoing transition to Google Chat, as users are now prompted to switch apps before being signed out of their account in favor of messaging directly in Gmail. As more and more of the Hangouts userbase is pushed from their preferred method of communicating, the Chat listing on the Play Store is getting review-bombed into oblivion.
Hangouts has been on the way out for four (!) years by now, but the service is still kicking. And in that process, Hangouts managed to reach an impressive milestone: It has been installed five billion times on the Play Store. That brings it right on par with a few pre-installed Google apps, but also with the two competing messaging products from Facebook.
Google Chat for web is now rolling out to personal accounts
With a brand-new UI, including Hangouts-like chat windows
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It's been a while since Google announced that it will split Hangout into two separate services — Chat and Meet. For workspace accounts, the transition to Chat began last year, but personal account holders were only given a blurred ETA of "first half of 2021." For a few lucky accounts, the migration started early, in August of 2020, and continued throughout the year and early 2021 (we've received dozens of tips since the original one). Now, things seem to be more official as Google is acknowledging the transition and calling this a "preview" of Google Chat.
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.
Hangouts group video calls are dead, with users now pushed to Meet
Hit that video call button to ... generate a Meet link?
Hangouts has been pronounced dead uncountable times, but Google's ill-fated attempt at an instant messaging service is kicking and fighting its demise. Now Google has taken another step to replace its old messenger with Meet and Chat, as group video calls have become unavailable on Android and the web following the latest app update.
Ever since Google announced back in 2017 that Hangouts would be split into the Chat and Meet apps, consumers have been curious about when to expect major changes. We started seeing the first signs of the transition earlier this year, and now Google is letting Hangouts holdovers know what to expect going forward — including the plans for Google Fi and Google Voice customers.
Hangouts users shouldn't panic about mysterious 'FCM' notifications
The mass messages are likely tied to recent reporting on Firebase exploits
Google Hangouts might not be as popular as it once was, but there are still plenty of people hanging on to it. A good number of Hangouts users across the globe received some strange notifications yesterday, which may be linked to a vulnerability in Google's Firebase platform.
Google now lets you install Zoom and a few other extensions on your child's Chromebook
All it took was a near-worldwide quarantine
With millions of children currently studying from home, and most likely using cheap computers like Chromebooks, glaring omissions in Chrome OS have come under the spotlight. For example, those who were using Family Link to manage their kids' Google accounts and Chromebooks noticed that they can't install any extensions on them. Maybe that was designed as a security measure, but it hindered the use of video conferencing tools like Zoom and Hangouts. Now that's changing.
Google Hangouts loses location sharing in latest update
It's not like people need to know where you are
We've known for a long time that Google Hangouts was destined to shut down, but most of us couldn't have predicted individual features would be slowly picked from its not-quite-dead body. That seems to be the case with the location sharing function formerly found in Hangouts. As of v32, the convenient messaging feature has been quietly removed.
We know Hangouts isn't long for this world. Support for the service is winding down and being replaced by Meet and Chat, but the transition is slow and has only been initiated for G Suite users so far. Those with personal Gmail accounts can't migrate and many are still attached to Hangouts. Whether you're in that boat or you have some data in the app that you want to save, you probably hit a major issue when trying to download videos: you can't do it from the app.
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.
For the last few years (since Google launched and the effectively killed Allo), Hangouts has been slowly dying. Bits of it have been broken off, and others were outright killed. According to a report by 9to5Google's Stephen Hall, its days are very literally numbered. The service is expected to shutter in the not-so-far-off year 2020.
Updates to the Hangouts app have been sporadic this year with big gaps in the earlier months, and new ones coming out about every month or two since I/O. Most new versions also seem to be lacking in any tangible changes, though that doesn't preclude bug fixes or other behind the scenes improvements. However, the latest update does show some signs of life.
With all the different apps and services Google offers, you've got no shortage of choices for how to get in touch with people, ranging from a simple email to a video call. And while all those options let us pick the most appropriate method for a given circumstance, sometimes accessing a particular one isn't as streamlined as we'd hope it would be — and that's especially true when we're looking at the intersection between more than one of these services. Today we're hoping to shed a little light on one of the less-intuitive corners of Google's communication infrastructure, as we check out how to send Hangouts messages through Google+.
Hey, remember that time when a Hangouts update added a shruggie code? How about a month later when the following version expanded to a whole library of ASCII and emoji shortcodes? Then that time about a year later when a few more were dropped in. Look, I'm not trying to draw a parallel between shortcodes in Hangouts and the stickers in Allo, but... #inb4. But seriously, the cool thing about the one and only easter egg phrase added to the latest Hangouts is IT'S F*#&)@& ZOIDBERG!