Google Is Closing Down Hangouts in November 2022

Google Hangouts will be discontinued in November of this year, according to Google. The company has announced that Hangouts will be shut down for all customers by November 2022 to revamp its Google Workspace suite to be as user-friendly as possible. 

The company encourages users to use Google Chat instead. Google is now focusing on the remaining mobile users, Web-users already on board of being migrated over. They will begin to receive notifications about the need to convert to Google Chat over the next several weeks. 

Users of Google Hangouts will be prompted to switch to Chat. 

Google said in a blog post that users of the Hangout mobile app will see a prompt to move to Chat. News of a move from Hangouts to Chat was first announced in October 2020, when Google made the latter service free to all users. 

Moving from Google Hangouts to Chat

Anyone who is currently using the Hangouts Chrome extension will be requested to switch to Chat on the web or install the Chat web app.

Users who continue to use Hangouts in Gmail will be upgraded to Chat in July.

Google states that users will be given ample notice of the changeover, with an in-product notice appearing at least a month before Hangouts on the web begins redirecting to Chat on the web, and Hangouts on the web will still remain available to use until later this year.

Conversations are automatically moved from Hangouts to Chat, according to the firm, although users who want to save a copy of their Hangouts data should download it using Google Takeout before Hangouts is no longer available in November 2022. 

“Google Chat offers a modern and integrated experience in Google Workspace. We have big ambitions for the future of Chat, and over the coming months you’ll see even more features like direct calling, in-line threading in Spaces and the ability to share and view multiple images,” wrote Ravi Kanneganti, Product Manager, Google Chat.

“As we take this final step to bring remaining Hangouts users to Chat, we hope users will appreciate our continued investment in making Chat a powerful place to create and collaborate.”

The Chat app is free to use and includes features such as the ability to edit Docs and Sheets, access to Spaces for topic-based collaboration, emoji support, and more.

Google Chat will soon bring new capabilities such as in-line threading in Spaces, sharing and viewing multiple photos, and many more. 

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