Google is slowly beginning to phase out Google Hangouts for all users by encouraging them to migrate to Google Chat.

The tech giant said in a blog post published yesterday (27 June) that it had made Google Chat available for everyone in 2020. In the post, Google Chat’s product manager Ravi Kanneganti, strongly hinted that people who still used Hangouts were missing out on the option to “upgrade” to Chat.

They were missing out on Chat’s “modern features and integration with other Workspace products,” said Kanneganti.

“We’ve continued to invest in Chat to help people better collaborate and express themselves, and now we’re taking steps to help remaining Hangouts users move to Chat.”

Google is slowly beginning to pull the plug on Hangouts. It will officially shut down in November. Until then, people who use the feature on mobile will begin to see an in-app prompt asking them to move to the Chat app or the Chat tool in Gmail.

Desktop users who use Hangouts in Gmail on the web will be converted to Chat in Gmail. People who use the Hangouts Chrome extension will be asked to move to Chat on the web or install the Chat web app. Web users will see a notice at least a month before Hangouts on the web begins redirecting users to Chat on the web.

Kanneganti sought to reassure Hangouts die-hards that the company had been making efforts to upgrade and improve Google Chat to cater to all.

“Moving to Google Chat opens up new and better ways to connect and collaborate,” said Kanneganti, adding that users can edit Docs, Slides or Sheets with side-by-side editing, making it easier to collaborate and converse at the same time.

Google Chat also includes Spaces, a dedicated collaboration space. Gmail has also got a new integrated view which makes it easier to use Chat alongside the Gmail inbox, Spaces and Meet.

“We have big ambitions for the future of Chat, and over the coming months you’ll see even more features like direct calling, in-line threading in Spaces and the ability to share and view multiple images. As we take this final step to bring remaining Hangouts users to Chat, we hope users will appreciate our continued investment in making Chat a powerful place to create and collaborate,” Kanneganti concluded.

Users who want to keep a copy of their Hangouts data are encouraged to use Google Takeout to download their data before November using instructions provided.

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