Google has been gradually moving away from Hangouts over the past couple of years. It will be transitioning G Suite users from the classic Hangouts service this year. The same change would also be made for individual users after that. Hangouts continues its march towards its eventual demise as the Wear OS app now bites the dust.
As some of you might have heard, a report from 2018 had suggested that Google would be looking to shutdown Hangouts Classic, where the features from the platform would be eventually merged with Hangouts Chat and Meet, both of which were launched sort of as the enterprise successor to Hangouts Classic.
One of the features that Google has been introducing to its apps is Smart Reply. Basically for those unfamiliar, this is where the feature suggests replies to messages based on the content. We’ve seen this feature applied to Google’s email services, and last we heard, Google was interested in bringing it onto more of its platforms.
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Recently there have been reports about the fate of Google Hangouts. An initial report from 9to5Google suggested that Google could be shutting Hangouts down in 2020, which Google later (sort of) refuted by claiming that they have yet to decide on a timeline for Hangouts, and that users will eventually be migrated to Hangouts Chat and Meet.
Earlier it was reported that Google Hangouts would be shutting down in the future. Given that Google had decided to make the platform more business-centric, transitioning customers over to apps like Allo and Duo and Android Messages, this did not come as a surprise (although Google has yet to officially announce/confirm a timeframe).
For the longest time ever, Google Hangouts was Google’s messenger platform where users could use it to chat with friends on their phones, via the dedicated website app, or even use it within other apps such as Gmail. However back in 2016, Google announced that Hangouts would be transitioning more towards business users, although it seems that might not be the case anymore.
There are a few companies out there who have apps that are dedicated for business communications, such as Slack. Clearly Google sees a huge potential in the enterprise market which is why you might recall that the company was looking to transition its Hangouts platform into one designed more for business use.
It seems that in addition to Google killing off SMS integration with Hangouts, there will be additional services that Google will be sunsetting, and one of those is Google Talk. However all is not lost because while Google Talk will be shutting down, Google has announced that it will be integrated into Hangouts instead, so there is always that option if you’re interested.
Earlier it was reported that Google had started sending out emails to users informing them that SMS integration with Hangouts would be coming to an end. For those who are wondering how official this announcement is, Google has since confirmed on their blog that this indeed will be happening over the course of the next couple of months.