Hangouts hangs up: Google chat app shuts this year

Google is winding down its messaging app Hangouts before it officially shuts in November, the web giant announced on Monday. Users of the mobile app will see a pop-up asking them to move their conversations onto Google Chat, which is yet another one of its online services. It can be accessed via Gmail as well as its own …

[bazza]

Yawn

Isn't it only solipsists that use Google messaging applications anyway?

[Michael Habel]

Re: Yawn

The "Secret" is to open the Play Store, and then to search for, and download the "Browser" of your choise. Be that Firebadger, Brave, Opera or Edge. So let us NOT say that options other than Chrome exist. Thanks.

[Pangasinan Philippines]

Be nice to Google

You described them as "The search titan"

How about the ad slinging?

[NeilPost]

Why??

“

"Moving to Google Chat opens up new and better ways to connect and collaborate," product manager Ravi Kanneganti said in a blog post. "For example, users can edit Docs, Slides or Sheets with side-by-side editing, making it easier to collaborate while continuing the conversation.”

… no-one wants to do this. Over complicated all-in-one apps suck ass.

Text, pics, animated gif’s, video, hyperlinks - is all required.

[chivo243]

Re: Why??

Just wait, they will kill Chat next year. They will have some new product, bright and shinny as a new penny, and worth about as much in terms of productivity...

[Wincerind]

Perhaps my memory failing me. But didn't they discontinue Hangouts once before?

[Oh Matron!]

yeah, and it was called something equally as nauseating...

[wiggers]

I had no idea it was still going! The remaining three users must be devastated...

[Michael Habel]

I think that was the Dialer portion, which IIRC was limited to the USoA at the time. It quickly died once Whatsapp managed to do it better, and World-wide.

[Pascal Monett]

So Gmail users are supposed to transition to Chat

I didn't want to be part of Hangouts, but Google made it mandatory at one point when signing in to Gmail.

I have no use for Chat, won't use it and don't want it.

I have one question : will I absolutely have to be signed in if I want to use my Gmail ?

[chivo243]

Re: So Gmail users are supposed to transition to Chat

I think it's the reverse, once you're signed into Gmail, you are already in Chat in the browser, of you used the separate app???

[chivo243]

But what will happen to Google Meet??

Or is that also going to be integrated into Chat?? I don't use either for work anymore... Google, do what you like with them.

[Charlie Clark]

Wrong

Google Hangouts was designed as an instant-messaging app operating across multiple platforms for its now defunct social network platform Google+

Hangouts is older than Google+; Google+ was essentially a single sign-on service with a social network tacked on. While the network had some nice features, it never really gained traction and so Google did what it often does, took what it thought worked well and put it in other things and closed it down.

Hangouts has always had very good support for voice calls and Google put some of this into WebRTC.

I only have one contact that I still use Hangouts for, but conversations are mirrored on Google Chat so that should be fairly transparent.

[iron]

> Google said it will integrate more features

Please stop. I don't want chat features integrated with Gmail in the first place I definitely don't want MORE.

[Claptrap314]

Bets?

When I started at G in 2015, it was as an SRE for Hangouts. At that time, Hangouts had already passed two internally-announced shutdown announcements.

Kinda sad to see it go. Not putting bets as to when it _actually_ goes...

[Blackjack]

Hangouts actually was successful, the problem is that Google had no clue how to monetize it.

[tip pc]

How is Chats / hangouts different from each other?

Hangouts and chats look and seem exactly the same to me.

I prefer google meet to zoom/Webex/teams as it just works from the browser with no additional apps to install.

I like chats, but I also liked hangouts.

I really don’t know what the difference is between chats / hangouts, they could have just renamed hangouts to chats and no one would have known.