Google Hangouts to shut down in November

After cancelling Google Hangouts for Workspace users in February, Google is now beginning the process of migrating free, personal Hangouts users to Chat. In an announcement posted on its blog, Google says that people still using the Hangouts mobile app will see a prompt to switch to Chat.

As for users using Hangouts in Gmail on the web, Google says it won't start asking users to switch to Chat until July. However, hangouts will be usable on its desktop site until November, and Google says it will give users "at least a month" notice before it starts pointing the site from Hangouts to Chat.

Google Chat is not similar to GChat (or Google Talk), which Google discontinued for good earlier this month. (Hangouts was initially supposed to be the successor to GChat, but here we are.) Instead, the company first hinted at its plans to transition Hangouts users to Chat in 2018 and make the feature free for all users in 2020.

If you're still using Hangouts, Google should automatically transfer your existing conversations to Chat. The company is also allowing you to use its Takeout service to download a copy of your Hangouts data before it is officially discontinued in November.

To entice users to switch to Chat, Google says it's rolling out some new features, including the ability to make direct calls, create online threads in Spaces (the rebranding of Rooms), and share and view multiple images.