Google announced in early December last year that they would be shutting down some of their messaging apps in order to focus on just five: Messages, Google Voice, Google Duo, Hangouts Chat, and Hangouts Meet. Unfortunately, one of the apps that are going away is Google Hangouts, Google’s most popular messaging app with users that date back 13 years.
According to an official blog post, Google will start shutting down Hangouts in October, starting off with its G Suite customers, or the segment of its user base that actually pays to use their apps. Once these customers are already comfortable with the newer Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet, that’s when Google will start shutting down the application for real.
Google is also killing off Allo, another one of their chat apps, and will be moving on to the Chat app, which is planned to be the next iMessage-like feature on all supported Android devices. Google’s goal is to make this app the “default texting experience on an Android phone as good as other modern messaging apps.” It won’t exactly be like the iMessage, of course, but it will have to do, for now.
