Goodbye to Hangouts: Google will migrate its users to Google Chat...

It is official, in 2021 Google will migrate your users from the Google Hangouts messaging service to Google Chat. This was confirmed this Thursday by the company in a blog post.

Starting in the first half of 2021, everyone can start upgrading from Hangouts to Chat

Although there is still no specific date and it is not clear what steps will be required for such a migration, the world’s largest internet search engine added that in the coming months will share more guidance to your users of how to transfer conversations, contacts and saved history of Hangouts a Chat.

To ensure a smooth transition, we’ll help you automatically migrate your Hangouts conversations, along with saved contacts and history

This measure complies with the plans that Google originally established in 2019, when removed the bracket Hangout for customers who paid for Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) and hinted that support for individual users would follow suit in 2020.

Although the change will take place gradually, it was anticipated that some Hangouts features will disappear sooner the full replacement is made.

In this way, Chat will stop being a business brand and will become a free service available within Gmail and in a separate application.

As to why would you want to update this service messaging before you’re forced to, is that the silver lining is that Chat not only offers features like direct and group conversations that you may be familiar with in Hangouts, but it can also let you plan and collaborate with others more easily.

Additionally, Google reported that it plans to end Fi support in Hangouts early next year, with the same access to SMS relocated to the Messages app.

Fi users will be able to make voice calls and check voicemail from Messages for the web, manage Messages conversations on all devices (even when their phone is off), and migrate their existing Hangouts conversations

That is, in the second half of 2021 Google I would have the same tools video calling than today, but with different names. Google Duo would remain an exclusively mobile service, and Google Meet would allow working on both mobile and desktop devices.

These decisions have to do with the plans of the technology brand of centralize your brand and products so that users can identify them in a better way.

New telecom regulations are being introduced in the EU and US from 2021 (…) To comply with these new regulations, we must remove the phone calls feature in Hangouts

The changes occur at a time when the video conferencing services are booming due to ongoing efforts to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.

Last April, Google declared to the portal CNET that your Meet video conferencing software was adding 2 million users per day after logging 2 billion minutes of video calls during March. Key competitor Zoom saw its own increase in users at the start of the pandemic, with an increase of more than 100 million users between March and April.

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