Published 15:39 IST, December 3rd 2018

Report says Google to shut down Hangouts by 2020 and not everyone is happy about it including Google

Last year, Google introduced a revamped Hangouts Chat and Meet for teams and businesses. Since then, the original Hangouts (also known as classic Hangouts) has continued to remain as it is.

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Google might have decided to put an end to the Hangouts consumer’s app by 2020, as per the 9to5Google report. The report cited sources close to the internal roadmap of Hangouts as saying that non-enterprise version of Google Hangouts will shut down sometime in 2020.

Last year, Google introduced a revamped Hangouts Chat and Meet for teams and businesses. Since then, the original Hangouts (also known as classic Hangouts) has continued to remain as it is. Now if the report is to be believed, Google will only run the enterprise-focused Hangouts Chat and Meet by 2020.

Responding to 9to5Google’s report, Scott Johnston, Real-Time Communications product lead at Google, denied that any decisions have been made with regards to the shut down of Hangouts. This is what Johnston tweeted:

https://t.co/QgYfj03ADn

Hey @hallstephenj, I run Hangouts and this is pretty shoddy reporting. No decisions made about when Hangouts will be shut down. Hangouts users will be upgraded to Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet. Your source is severely misinformed. You can do better.
— Scott Johnston (@happyinwater) December 1, 2018

Johnston further went on to say that all Hangouts users (presumably the non-enterprise ones) will be migrated to Chat and Meet. Johnston’s tweet specifically made it clear that this will result in the eventual shut down of Hangouts classic.

2/ So while that will result in the eventual shut down of Hangouts classic (as we now call it), it doesn't imply we are ending support for the use case supported by the product: messaging and meetings.
— Scott Johnston (@happyinwater) December 1, 2018

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Meanwhile, report about Google’s decision to put an end to Hangouts has angered so many of its users who have taken to Twitter to vent their frustration. Below are some of the tweets:

Respectfully, what's "shoddy" here is Google's decision to deprecate a phenomenal app with irreplaceable functionality, and to subsequently bungle said deprecation. You can do better.
— 𝘔𝘪𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘦𝘭 (@michaelbrgmn) December 1, 2018

This tweet sounds pretty arrogant, even if the reporting is imprecise. If Google wants goodwill they have to earn user trust by not shutting down services every couple years.
— Tamás Szelei (@szeleitamas) December 2, 2018

Instead of this mess, Google should have united Hangouts with Messages, Allo and Duo altogether in only just one single and great universal app way long ago, able to compete with iMessages.
— Andrey Lucas (@andreylucas__) December 1, 2018

Why on Earth does @Google make so many segmented messaging apps???
— #Kevin (@kschom) December 1, 2018

Why are you so bad at names, Google? Hangouts Chat and Meet are terrible. Just call it Hangouts and upgrade the functionality? No one likes two part names and I'd imagine they're bad for SEO/branding as well.
— Esa Edvik (@HiredCam) December 2, 2018

15:39 IST, December 3rd 2018

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Report says Google to shut down Hangouts by 2020 and not everyone is happy about it including Google

Last year, Google introduced a revamped Hangouts Chat and Meet for teams and businesses. Since then, the original Hangouts (also known as classic Hangouts) has continued to remain as it is.

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