Google is shaking up its messaging efforts yet again, urging users to migrate from Hangouts to Google chat before November 2022.
Google has been working to replace Hangouts for the last couple of years but is now telling customers it will shutter the service in November 2022. Google already moved its Workspace customers over to chat in March 2022, but the November deadline will impact anyone still using the defunct service.
“For most people, conversations are automatically migrated from Hangouts to Chat, so it’s easy to pick up where you left off,” writes Ravi Kanneganti, Product Manager, Google Chat. “However, we encourage users who wish to keep a copy of their Hangouts data to use Google Takeout to download their data before Hangouts is no longer available in November 2022 by following these instructions. You can visit the Help Center for more information on the differences between Chat and Hangouts, the migration timelines, and why we recommend downloading your Hangouts data.”
Google may hold a world record for the number of chat and messaging apps developed (and abandoned) by a single company.
When discussing Google’s “decade and a half of instability” in the messaging space, Ars Technica Ron Amadeo made this comment:
Because no single company has ever failed at something this badly, for this long, with this many different products (and because it has barely been a month since the rollout of Google Chat), the time has come to outline the history of Google messaging. Prepare yourselves, dear readers, for a non-stop rollercoaster of new product launches, neglected established products, unexpected shut-downs, and legions of confused, frustrated, and exiled users.
Only time will tell if Chat will fare any better than Google’s previous messaging efforts. In the meantime, users are left to make yet another transition from one product to another.
