Hangouts for the web will start redirecting users to Google’s Chat service.
Recently, Google announced that it was going to discontinue the Hangouts Chat app. It first announced this change two years ago, when it said that employees were supposed to use Chat in lieu of Hangouts. TechCrunch followed up on the story by noting that this situation was officially reality: the company was telling its Android and iOS users to switch to Chat or Gmail’s standalone version. Now, communication through Google is officially dead.
Updates to the Hangouts website on November 1, 2022 will change how it looks. Users might see a message that says: “Starting November 1, 2022, Hangouts on the web will redirect to Chat on Web. We recommend moving to Chat now.” For now, we can still access the website without being automatically redirected, but there’s a link our users can click to load Google Chat. The Hangouts website might permanently disappear in the coming days.
Google’s Chat app is a new way to communicate with friends and colleagues, made even more effective by the fact that it integrates with other Google services. For example, users can edit Docs, Slides or Sheets side-by-side within Chat, easily access conversations without opening the Chat website, and create new Spaces for topic-based work collaboration.
Google previously said that those who want to save their Hangouts data can do so with the Takeout tool. However, we’re still seeing Hangouts on the site’s tool. If you want to save your data before this service is taken offline for good, then you’ll need to use it before it disappears.