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Since February, Google has sounded the alarm about the impending migration from the legacy Google Hangouts application in favor of Google Chat. Chat is meant to become Google’s single messaging solution, which provides rich-text editing, @ mentions, media and emojis, and seamless integration with other Workspace apps like Gmail and Spaces.
Google has since then taken additional steps to urge Hangouts users to move over to chat. These include warning messages in the Hangouts mobile app and the Hangouts Chrome extension. Additionally, those still using Hangouts in Gmail on the web were automatically upgraded to Chat in Gmail.
As a final step in the migration, Google has announced that Hangouts on the web will begin redirecting to Google Chat on the web starting November 1, 2022. As a result, Hangouts will no longer be accessible from that date on. These changes will affect all Google Workspace customers and legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers.
It is unclear if there will be additional notices past this one to remind users of this final date. Since a subset of users still prefer Hangouts to Chat and are attempting to hold on to it until the last minute, there could be another warning towards the end of October. However, at this point, we should all accept this is happening no matter what, so all that’s left is embracing Chat and learning to love it as much as we did Hangouts.
Admin Info
• Admins should know that some conversations or portions of conversations won’t automatically migrate from Hangouts to Chat for some users. However, you should receive an email notification with more details if this is the case for your domain.
• Admins should also inform their users about the upgrade from Google Hangouts to Google Chat.
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