(NEXSTAR) – Following much more than a ten years, Google is getting ready to shut down its messaging platform, Google Hangouts, and to changeover people to its most recent service, Google Chat.
Hangouts – which was at first aspect of Google+, in accordance to The Verge – permits consumers to information other people or video call them. It can be accessed by means of a standalone app and an online element. Google announced changes for Hangouts buyers in late 2020, which involved directing them to use possibly Fi, Google’s mobile cellular phone service, or Google Voice.
Chat became no cost to accessibility shortly soon after, and was additional to Google Workspace in area of Hangout earlier this yr.
In a Monday blog article, Google announced Hangouts will no longer be obtainable beginning in November 2022. If you use Hangouts on your cellphone or desktop, it is likely that you have currently been prompted to go to Chat.
Starting up in July, people who access Hangouts in Gmail online will be upgraded to Chat in Gmail. In accordance to Google, Hangouts on the website will continue to be obtainable to access until tumble. Users of Hangouts on the net will get a observe at minimum a single month right before Hangouts commences redirecting to Chat on the website.
Chat is equivalent to Hangouts and other messaging platforms like Slack and Microsoft Teams. It lets consumers to deliver private or group messages features Areas as “a dedicated location for subject matter-centered collaboration” and can be accessed through an application. Customers can also obtain Chat in an integrated perspective in Gmail.
“We have big ambitions for the future of Chat, and above the coming months you are going to see even more options like immediate calling, in-line threading in Areas and the capability to share and check out multiple images,” Ravi Kanneganti, a merchandise manager for Google Chat, wrote in Monday’s web site.
Hangouts isn’t the initially platform to enter the “Google grave.” Amid those is the aforementioned Google+, which was changed with Currents about three yrs in the past. Currents will be replaced with Areas – previously a function in Chat – in 2023, Google introduced in February.
