Google Integrating Hangouts into G Suite’s Chat and Meet Services: Report

Google might be phasing out its Hangouts service as early as 2020, reads a report.

According to a new report from 9to5Google, Google Hangouts will be integrated into G Suites’s Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet services. Citing sources “familiar with the product’s internal roadmap,” the report explains that the service will be integrated as soon as 2020.

Basically, Hangouts as an independent app will cease to exist. Apart from this, the transition to Chat and Meet for regular Google account holders is likely going to be troublesome as both of these apps are enterprise-focused services that require G Suite accounts.

However, Google Hangouts product manager, Scott Johnston, said in his Twitter account that there is not yet a definite date when Hangouts will be closed.

“We are fully committed to supporting classic Hangouts users until everyone is successfully migrated to Chat and Meet,” the company said in an email, without elaborating.



Google had stopped giving essential development updates to Hangouts some time ago but Johnston staunchly defended the platform claiming that “not only corporate or enterprise users, but individuals too, regularly use such platforms.”

Hangouts replaced the previous GTalk in 2013, adding features such as VoIP that weren’t available on the XMPP platform that most messenger apps used at the time. It was originally lumped in with Google+, the soon-to-be-defunct social layer of Google.