Google To Phase Out Hangouts In November 2022

Google has finally announced that Hangouts is now on its final legs. The company plans to shut Hangouts in November this year and has asked users to move to Chat.

Starting today, Google is prompting Hangouts users on mobile to switch to Chat in Gmail or the Chat app. The company will be phasing out Hangouts in November 2022. 

While Hangouts on the web will be available until later this year, Google has asked its mobile users switch to Chat. Beginning today, users will see an in-product notice till at least a month before Hangouts on the web starts redirecting to Chat on the web.

Google is advising users to make use of Google Takeout to download their data before Hangouts is no longer available in November 2022. In the meantime, conversations are automatically migrated from Hangouts to Chat for most people.

Google has been investing a lot on Chat and building it up to offer a modern and integrated experience in Google Workspace. 

“We have big ambitions for the future of Chat, and over the coming months you'll see even more features like direct calling, in-line threading in Spaces and the ability to share and view multiple images. As we take this final step to bring remaining Hangouts users to Chat, we hope users will appreciate our continued investment in making Chat a powerful place to create and collaborate”, said the Google blog.