Google Closes Hangouts Forever, Although 5 Billion Users Have Downloaded It!

Google closes the Google Hangouts application. (photo: doc. google)

JAKARTA - Google has just closed the text, video, and voice chat applications installed in Gmail, Hangouts. As previously announced, the company is switching Hangouts users to Google Chat.

Starting earlier this month, the Google Hangouts web app will no longer be available. Meanwhile, applications on Android and iOS had already left users last July.

The tech giant said that while most messages and contacts should be moved to the new service, some conversations or parts of a conversation won't automatically migrate from Hangouts to Chat.

Users can continue to use Google's Takeout service to download their Hangouts data until January 1, 2023.

According to TechCrunch, Thursday, November 3, Hangouts started as a feature on Google+ before becoming a standalone app. The messaging service has 5 billion downloads on the Google Play Store.

While it can't completely replace Hangouts, Chat provides additional features for group conversations as well as security and collaboration tools like Spaces and editing Docs, Slides, or Sheets side by side with other users.

Chat users can also send GIFs and use @mentions to notify someone in the group.

"Google Chat offers a modern, integrated experience across Google Workspace. We have big ambitions for the future of Chat, and in the coming months you will see more features like direct calling, in-line threading in Spaces, and the ability to share and view multiple images," Google Chat product manager Ravi Kanneganti said in June when users were asked to migrate.

"As we take the final step to bring the rest of Hangouts users to Chat, we hope users will appreciate our continued investment in making Chat a reliable place to create and collaborate."