It was reported yesterday that Google will supposedly be dropping its messaging and video chat app Hangouts sometime in 2020. The move doesn"t come as a surprise since the search giant has been aiming to transition consumers to its Allo and Duo services, which were announced in 2016 as part of Google"s effort to replace Hangouts and make that platform a more business-centric service.
Still as part of that effort, Google last year introduced Hangouts Meet and Hangouts Chat, which each split the video chat and messaging features of Hangouts, respectively. While these services are aimed at enterprise users with G Suite accounts, it seems that Google may be planning to open them to non-G Suite users in the future based on a tweet by the company"s product lead for Hangouts, Scott Johnston.
It"s not exactly clear when that will happen, but guessing from Johnston"s tweet, it might occur sometime before 2020 when the classic version of Hangouts is rumored to be going away. Given the limited availability of Meet and Chat (G Suite only) at present, the migration of Hangouts users to these platforms in the future is a welcome move especially for those who enjoy their Hangouts experience.
Source: 9to5Google