Google has officially shut down Google Hangouts in its push to replace it with Google Chat.
Google announced it was shutting down Hangouts, effective November 2022, and that date is finally here. The company outlined Hangouts’ fate in a support document:
Starting November 1, 2022, Hangouts on the web will no longer be available. If you wish to keep your Hangouts data, we strongly encourage you to use Google Takeout and download a copy before January 1, 2023, when Hangouts data will be deleted.
Google has a long history of troubles with messaging. The company has never had a unified vision for its messaging, leading Ars Technica to call out the company for “a decade and a half of instability.”
It remains to be seen if Google’s latest venture fairs any better than its previous ones.