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Google Hangouts For Consumers Will Be Shutting Down Sometime In 2020 (9to5google.com) 83

Posted by BeauHD from the end-of-the-road dept.
According to 9to5Google, Google Hangouts for consumers will be shutting down sometime in 2020. The news shouldn't come as too much of a surprise since Google essentially stopped development on the app more than a year ago. Thankfully, there are plenty of other Google messaging apps available, such as Allo, Duo, and Android Messages. From the report: Last spring, Google announced its pivot for the Hangouts brand to enterprise use cases with Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet, so the writing has been on the wall for quite some time regarding the Hangouts consumer app's demise. Meanwhile, Google has transitioned its consumer-facing messaging efforts to RCS 'Chat' and Android Messages following Allo's misadventures.

As mentioned, Hangouts as a brand will live on with G Suite's Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet, the former intended to be a team communication app comparable to Slack, and the latter a video meetings platform. Meanwhile, Google Voice calling, which was at first independent and then long integrated into Hangouts, was moved back out to its own redesigned app earlier this year. Interestingly, despite its forthcoming axing, Hangouts was one of a few apps to get early support for Android Auto's new MMS and RCS functionality, alongside Android Messages and WhatsApp.
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Google Hangouts For Consumers Will Be Shutting Down Sometime In 2020 More

Google Hangouts For Consumers Will Be Shutting Down Sometime In 2020

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  • The only people who have been using Hangouts are spam bots who use it as a way of getting into people's gmail inboxes without actually sending an email. There's no easy opt-out either.

    • I use it as the easiest option for messaging without having to give out my cell phone #. It also keeps me from having to install non-native Android apps for IM, which tend to drain the battery a lot more quickly.

    • Re:Good riddance (Score:5, Informative)

      by omnichad ( 1198475 ) on Friday November 30, 2018 @09:45PM (#57729918) Homepage

      No. I've been using it as my default messaging app since my Google Voice number is my primary number. I can send and reply to text messages from my computer with a full keyboard using the Hangouts Chrome app.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jimbo ( 1370 )

      I gave my kid an old phone without sim card so he can contact me anywhere with wifi. Hangouts is a lightweight messenger that doesn't require cell #, like most do. I guess Skype can do the same but most others require a number.

    • While I hate hangouts with a passion I found the diamond in the rough. I can have two google voice numbers and know exactly where it comes from. So I use the GV app that directly calls my fone for personal and hangouts with VOIP for business :)

  • Seems to make sense (Score:3)

    by Actually, I do RTFA ( 1058596 ) on Friday November 30, 2018 @07:04PM (#57729366)

    Started February 2015, so obviously 5 years later it shuts down.

    I guess data mining the video for their AI projects was harder than they thought.

  • Alternative for seamless PC to mobile transitions? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by thebes ( 663586 ) on Friday November 30, 2018 @07:08PM (#57729384)

    I use it for people I communicate with regularly because it doesn't matter where I am...laptop, phone, tablet, etc. I can send and receive messages and it doesn't make a difference. SMS in a browser is pretty flaky still, and has a tendency to become detached at inconvenient times, and doesn't always send immediately.

    I'm genuinely open to suggestions (I'm an android user, so no Apple only stuff) and Facebook messenger will be one of the last I consider.

    • Same here; maybe Signal or Riot can get enough features by 2020 to be a decent replacement. The move to get the hell away from TIM silos as soon as possible is rapidly accelerating. Supposedly WebRTC is mostly usable now too; just needs a usability scaffold and directory.

      • Riot.im honestly has more features than Hangouts at this point, when I go back to message people on Hangouts for instance I tend to find myself surprised I can't just attach arbitrary files for example.

    • I use Hangouts for pretty much all messaging. I rarely use my smartphone as a phone, and I don't really need data access, so only family members and a few close friends have my cell #. $15 of prepaid minutes usually lasts me a few months. So I won't use any messaging app/service that requires a cell carrier (or my cell #) for messaging.

      Even if I did have unlimited texts, I still wouldn't want to give my cell # out to everyone. If all the good options for using my email address for messaging vanish, I may se

      • I may see if I can set up a Google Voice # for messaging only (no calls, and no SMS to my cell #)

        You can do this....and use the number with Hangouts for SMS messaging. Still no idea what the replacement for that will be when Hangouts is gone.

        • I've read that the replacement is supposed to be the new and improved Android messaging app:

          https://gizmodo.com/how-the-ne... [gizmodo.com]

          Which of course may mean it's flaky from non-phone devices, but they're supposed to be switching to RCS as quickly as they can. Maybe RCS will be less flaky from a desktop/laptop than SMS. Not sure.

          • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward

            The problem is how long will we have the replacement... With Google it will be around for a couple years, and then they will drop it, and release something else. So don't get used to it or count it.

          • Re:Alternative for seamless PC to mobile transitio (Score:5, Insightful)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Saturday December 01, 2018 @05:36AM (#57731000) Homepage Journal

            Android Messages doesn't have video chat. Google Allo does, but there is no desktop client.

            Hangouts is great. Video, voice and text chat all in one place on mobile and desktop. Nothing else offers that.

            Hangouts has some other unique features, like the way it handles group chats. It shows the webcam/avatar of whoever is talking using the volume level of each participant, and it really helps stop people talking over each other.

            Damn it Google, why do you kill everything good? None of your other stuff comes close to Hangouts!

        • Woops. Sorry, the new RCS app will be called "Google Chat", not "Android Messages".

          https://9to5google.com/2018/07... [9to5google.com]

          Not sure when it will be available, though.

    • Not to mention all this but with Google Voice integration too.

    • WeChat ?
      Be sure to be monitored by Chinese gov.
      But the app does a pretty good job.

      To bad, I was trying to make my parents adopt HangOut, to replace poor quality phone communications. I'll need to train them again, on WeChat.
      Getting sick of managing dozens of SMS/MMS/Chat/Voice/Video apps.

    • WhatsApp works fine for this, so does Skype

  • Back to skype (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Time to go back to skype I guess. Hangouts was the one app my family can use personally, and I can interact with in my corporate box. SO much for that convenience. Maybe I'll switch to something else.

  • I haven't felt this sad... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Patent Lover ( 779809 ) on Friday November 30, 2018 @07:24PM (#57729452)

    ...since the end of Windows Phone.

  • Google chat. thank goodness we can still use it! Oh....

  • Thanks to google (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 30, 2018 @07:46PM (#57729524)

    First you shoved it down our throats. We liked gtalk. Then you abandon it.

    And why as a business would we want to use it??? You stopped development on it over a year ago!!! Itâ(TM)s not good enough for the plebes, so now your paying customers have to use it!?!?

    Asshats.

  • I appreciate that search is paid for selling our search terms to advertisers. If it were a product we paid for instead, Google would chicken out and cancel it after the first sales month that wasn't a new high.

    Remember how we used to hate it back in the nineteen hundreds when the US had only three TV networks, which had a habit of canceling any show that wasn't the national Neilsen leader by November? If Google had owned one of those networks back in the day, it would use the first dud show as an excuse to

  • This is the reason you shouldn't even rely on one of the most powerful and rich companies on earth to provide a useful service over an extended period of time. I'm glad all my Google Accounts are throwaways.

    Hangouts is a neat, feasible zero-fuss communications package and I use it regularly. Once it goes, I'll switch to threema ( https://threema.ch/en/ [threema.ch] -- recommended ) entirely.

    However, I'd like a neat web-centric video/VOIP chat solution, preferably one that doesn't get closed down 3 years in. Any suggesti

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by geek ( 5680 )

      I'm not against closed source apps but ones that claim to be privacy centric that remain closed are problematic to me.

  • I've always been of the opinion that grown-up men don't "hang out" - only teenagers do that. Hence I've never used, or proposed the use of, that awful thing that is Google Hangouts. Also, as one of the last entrenched BlackBerry OS users (yes, that's right: you'll have to pry that BlackBerry Passport from my cold, dead fingers), I was shielded from it anyways.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geek ( 5680 )

      I've always been of the opinion that grown-up men don't "hang out" - only teenagers do that. Hence I've never used, or proposed the use of, that awful thing that is Google Hangouts. Also, as one of the last entrenched BlackBerry OS users (yes, that's right: you'll have to pry that BlackBerry Passport from my cold, dead fingers), I was shielded from it anyways.

      Ok gramps, we'll all get off your lawn now.

  • I've been using Hangout since the start, it's really a part of my life...

    • It allowed people from all over the world to meet and discover our governments were all telling us lies about one another. This lead to all kinds of issues, so it had to be stopped, just like they are deplatforming anyone both logical and anti-communist.
      I recall one interesting hangout I was in as a musician, swapping licks with some other guys in Israel, Iran, Libya (when there was still a Libya). We were at it for most of an hour - no politics. This piqued my curiosity, so I brought it up. The respon

  • Shutting down for consumers? (Score:3)

    by OneHundredAndTen ( 1523865 ) on Saturday December 01, 2018 @11:29AM (#57732012)
    What the hell does that mean? That the app will stop working, period, if you are just a consumer? That you will need some sort of contract with Google to get it work? And who/what is taking over its capabilities? The sorry Duo/Allo pair? Google Voice? No-one? Quite frankly, more and more it looks as though Google is run by very fickle, very stupid people that, outside the entrenched ad business that they have, are useless. Worse than useless, for they seem to have a knack for creating confusion apparently for no good reason. Probably Google managers striving to justify their (largely) unnecessary jobs. Larry, Sergey, are you having fun being mostly evil? And all for the sake of a few billions more, that you can't spend anyway?
  • there are alternatives. I have been using various combinations of Tox, Signal, and others for a while now, but still fall back on Hangouts due to it's penetration. You knew you needed to take your communications back into your own hands at some point. This is just what everyone needs. We don't need to feed the hive mind anymore.

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