Google to shutdown Hangouts in October 2019

Tech giant Google is going to shut down classic Hangouts starting this October. The tech giant has announced that it would continue its service for Hangouts Chat and Meet.

Google posted a public statement on its blog  that Hangouts will be shut down for G Suite users first, and will assist them in the transition from the classic version to the service to the next generation Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet. The company posted three key dates on the transition process with the first one being April 16, 2019 when many changes will take place that will require G Suite administrator action. Google would not be shutting the service for regular users until those on G Suite Hangouts will be successfully shifted to Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet. Until then, Hangouts will remain up and running into 2020.

Google also mentioned that it would bring more features from classic Hangouts to Chat like integration with Gmail, the ability to talk to external users, improved video calling and making calls with Google Voice. All these additional features will be added between April and September. As for non-enterprise users, Google says they can expect to see a free version of Chat and Meet following the G Suite transition. Last year, however, the company stated that Chat and Meet would follow a ‘freemium’ version which will have features that users will have to pay to use. Google has not specified or given any details about these features, according to a report in The Verge.

Google started migrating Hangouts users to the Meet video conferencing service last year. The company. Hangout is not the first app that is being shut down by the search engine company. Google Allo, a messaging app with a chat-bot facility is shutting down in March 2019 whereas Google Plus will be shutting down in April 2019.