Google Hangouts finally gets a shutdown date: November 2022
Drew
Google Hangouts finally gets a shutdown date: November 2022
The shutdown of Hangouts has been a long time coming. The service launched in 2013 as an in-place upgrade to Google Talk. As Android's default messaging service, Hangouts amassed 5 billion downloads, and at one point, it even handled Android SMS duties, just like Apple's iMessage. The service fell out of favor with Google's legendarily fickle messaging strategy in 2016 with the launch of Google Allo.
Google announced in 2018 that Hangouts would eventually be shut down. After several delays, Workspace customers (the paid business version of Google apps) finally had Hangouts removed in March 2022, but regular consumers can still switch between Google Chat and Hangouts. Starting today, most Google Hangouts clients will start pushing users to Google Chat. While most follow-ups to Google Hangouts have been severely lacking in comparable features.
