Back in September, Google announced its Hangouts communication app would close for good. At the time, the company promised Google Hangouts would head into the sunset on November 1. Well, that date was yesterday and Google has kept to its word.
Yes, Google Hangouts is finally shut, two years after the company first began to wind down the service.
Google has been changing its communication app abilities in recent months, including the unification of Google Meet and Google Duo into a single service (Google Meet).
Google has been promising its intentions to make Google Chat become its default texting app since earlier this year. At the time, the company said Google Hangouts on Gmail web, mobile, and Chrome extension will be automatically migrated to Chat.
Hangouts is now disabled for good. However, users are still able to export their history to Google Chat through the Google Takeout service. Although, the company says that option will only be available until January 1, 2023.
Data Migration
Google points out that the majority of data will migrate automatically, but there may be cases where some is left behind.
The company points to the following reasons for migrating from Hangouts:
“Upgrading Google Hangouts to Google Chat gives users a single messaging solution and better integration across Google Workspace. Further, users can take advantage of the feature-rich experience, such as:
- Rich-text editing
- Tagging specific people with @ mentions
- Searching for and sharing GIFs and using emoji reactions
- Seamless integration with Gmail, alongside your other critical apps
- Spaces, dedicated places for organizing people, topics, and projects in Google Workspace.”
Tip of the day: If you need to Create, Delete or Resize Partitions, Windows has everything you thanks to the built-in Disk Management-tool.