That long, semi-messy process finished up only. Google's video services saw a major uptick in users - both for corporate and personal reasons - amid the pandemic as lockdown protocols and virtual work became commonplace for many. Original article, J(12:27 PM ET): Earlier this year, Google started to transition folks away from the Workspace version of Hangouts.
GOOGLE HANGOUTS ORIGINAL VERSION DOWNLOAD
The service is expected to run through November before it's gone for good and all users are auto-directed to Chat.įor Hangout loyalists who are worried about their conversation logs and data once they're forced to make the switch over, Google is allowing users to use Google Takeout (its data migration service) to download data for personal records. Those using Hangouts on Google's mobile app will be prompted to switch over to Chat as early as today, while those using the service on a web browser or desktop won't be prompted to make to switch until next month. It’s not fully RIP to Hangouts just yet, but we are closer than ever.Google maintains that Chat will offer users a more comprehensive and interactive experience than the Hangouts interface was able to provide, such as text editing options, mentions to tag other users, and even the use of extensive emojis and GIFs. If you get a new phone, you are going to have to switch to Chat anyway. Google at least provides it updates and tries to improve it from time to time, unlike Hangouts that was left for dead and stripped of features many moons ago. But really, you might as well head over to Google Chat. The web version of still works as well, at least for now.
GOOGLE HANGOUTS ORIGINAL VERSION APK
If you still want to use Hangouts, I’m sure you can sideload-bro an APK that’s floating about.
This move is likely the reason for its removal, as those were some of the last remaining users of Hangouts. Why the move now to remove it after all these years? Google has been pushing everyone off of Hangouts for some time, but about a week ago they started forcing Google Workspace users off of it. From your phone’s Play Store, if you had it installed at some point, you should still Google Hangouts is a communication tool similar to Skype or WhatsApp. For example, if you go to Google Play on the web and search for “Hangouts,” you should come up empty. In 2013, Google developed their own messaging app. You’ll still be able to find it on Google Play if you previously had it installed on your current phone, but for new users or your new phone, it is indeed gone. This week, Google basically removed Hangouts from both the Google Play Store and Apple Appstore. While we aren’t quite to the finish line, Google did take another big step in finishing off this once glorious messaging app that was cut off because of a poor vision of executives or hungry up-and-comers within Google who pitched other, awful and quickly-failed messaging options. At that time, we believed that Hangouts might disappear from our phones and the Play Store within that same year, yet here we are in 2022 thinking this might finally be the end. We first started talking about its demise back in 2020, shortly after Google released Chat and Meet.
Google Hangouts has had the slowest death of all time.