RIP Google Hangouts: You were good to us and we’ll miss you

The last stand for the classic Google Hangouts messaging app ends today with the shuttering of the web-based version, which served as a stopgap for those that hadn’t completely made the switch to Google Chat.

Starting November 1, 2022, Hangouts on the web will no longer be available. If you wish to keep your Hangouts data, we strongly encourage you to use Google Takeout and download a copy before January 1, 2023, when Hangouts data will be deleted.

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Access to Hangouts on the web will be available until November 1, 2022. After that time, users will be redirected to Chat on the web. Users can continue to use Google Takeout to download their data until January 1, 2023 (PST, GMT-7). 

Google Support

Google began its shutdown of classic Hangouts back in 2018 with an original expiration date of sometime in 2020. However, the COVID-19 pandemic had different plans. The service ended up sticking around for a couple more years as it was slowly removed from groups of users while beefing up the feature set of its would-be replacement, Google Chat.

The final warning call came in September 2022 when Google announced that Hangouts on the web would begin redirecting to Google Chat on the web starting November 1, 2022, and that Hangouts would no longer be accessible from that date on. Ladies and gentlemen, that day is today.

So join us in bidding adieu to Google Hangouts, the messaging service that launched in 2013 and kept us in touch with friends and family, even by integrating SMS. I leave you with the below video to reminisce about the good old times and with the following thought:

Hangouts: May the lessons learned by using your service enlighten those that created you, and may your successor fill us with as much joy.