When it comes to enterprises, the migration to Google Chat has been postponed for some time.
The last day to use Google’s Hangouts instant messaging service has been announced.
Enterprise and commercial customers now using “Classic Hangouts” will be transitioned to the new Google Chat service on March 22, 2022, according to the firm.
All Google Workspace clients will now be on Google Chat, the firm said in a blog post, and anybody wanting to access Hangouts would be referred to Google Chat instead.
Farewell Hangouts on Google
After a series of delays, Google has now announced that Hangouts would be shutting down on September 30th.
In October 2019, it was originally reported that Google was planning to rename Hangouts as Google Chat for G Suite corporate customers, and that transition would begin in November 2020. Users would be able to migrate to the new service in the following month.
Google also announced that it will rename its video conferencing service, Hangouts Meet, to Google Meet, at the same time that the news broke.
In the next weeks, the last part of the migration will be completed, with Google emphasising that “it is not feasible to opt out of this transition” and that all legacy Hangouts applications, including the Android and iOS apps, will be discontinued.
If you’d want to save your old Hangouts and Chat data, you’ll have to utilise a Google tool.
Hangouts users who simply have personal Google accounts will not be affected by this move, although it is expected that they will shortly.
This update will take place over a period of three weeks beginning on March 22, 2022, if your company has the “Chat and traditional Hangouts” preset in its Google Workspace Admin panel.
A five-week upgrading process will begin on April 4, 2022, for those who have the “Classic Hangouts only” configuration.