It’s been a long time since we have been talking of the goodbye Google Hangouts, especially since Google decided to divide it into two brands: Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet. In fact, last year, the classic Hangouts already gave way to Hangouts Chat for G Suite customers, although the rest of the users could continue using it.
A few weeks ago, the company officially presented Google Workspace, a new workspace that brings together all productivity applications: Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Documents, Sheets, Presentations, Meet, Chat, etc. At first, was exclusively for G Suite customers, but has now confirmed that next year he will expand it to the whole world. And not only that, but in the first half of 2021, it will carry out the update from Hangouts to Chat, which will be available to everyone and for free.
Migration of conversations, contacts and history
As Google itself has confirmed, its newly released Workspace, currently available to commercial G Suite customers, will arrive next year to all others. This change will bring with it the future update of Hangouts to Chat, which it will be a free service in both the built-in Gmail experience and the standalone Chat app.
In addition to familiar Hangouts features such as direct and group messaging, Chat brings some added utilitiessuch as inbox delivery, faster search, emoji reactions, and suggested responses. It also allows you to easily plan with others, share and collaborate on files, and assign tasks. And it has the same real-time phishing protections as Gmail.
Google has confirmed that, from the first half of 2021, the Hangouts to Chat upgrade will occur, so that during the transition, your Hangouts conversations, along with your saved contacts and history, will be automatically migrated.
On the other hand, early next year, too Fi and Voice support will be removed in Hangouts, and it will be the Google Messages and Voice applications, respectively, that will offer a similar experience. Finally, and due to the new telecommunications regulations of the European Union and the United States, Google has announced that, from 2021, it will eliminate the function of phone calls in Hangouts.
More information | Google
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The news
Google Chat will replace Hangouts in 2021 and will be free for everyone
was originally published in
Xataka Android
by
Laura Sacristan
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