Google Migrates Hangouts Users To Google Chat

Google Hangouts illustration (Photo by Elle Cartier on Unsplash)

JAKARTA - Google plans to terminate Hangouts services at the end of next year. This is in line with a major overhaul of the Google Workspace service which is now G Suite.

Quoting The Verge page, Google will start a transition period by moving users from Hangouts to Chat which will start in the first half of 2021. Later Google will provide guidelines for automatically moving all conversations, contacts, and user history to the Chat service.

"From the first half of 2021, everyone can start upgrading from Hangouts to Chat," wrote Google in its blog, Monday, October 19.

Indeed, Google's move to retire Hangouts services has not come as a surprise since it was announced in 2018. Before Hangouts is removed, some of its features will begin to be removed. One of them is Google Voice support from Hangouts early next year.

Google says the switch from Hangouts to Chat will be gradual and there will be a period of time during which the two messaging services can still be used.

Hangouts Migration to G Suit and Chat (Google doc)

Eventually, all Hangouts users, whether free or registered to the Workspace, will be moved to Chat. Once that process is complete, Chat will replace Hangouts completely.

While not completely like Hangouts, Chat has a number of new additional features for opening live or group chat fields. Later Google Chat will be integrated with the Gmail application along with Rooms and Meet.