If the seemingly non-existent support or lack of feature updates for Google Hangouts wasn’t enough of a hint, it appears Google will be shutting Hangouts down for consumers in 2020.
According to a source familiar with the matter who spoke with 9to5Google, the closure will happen ‘sometime in 2020’.
This isn’t a huge surprise with Google moving away from supporting the consumer side of Hangouts for some time. Google transitioned Hangouts to be more of an enterprise tool rather than consumer with the launch of Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet last year.
If the transition from consumer focus wasn’t enough, Google has been transitioning their focus for messaging to the ‘Chat’ platform powered by TXT messaging replacement Rich Communication Services (RCS) for some time.
Though it’s still unofficial, and given Google hasn’t managed to launch a successful cross-platform replacement for Hangouts it’s time to start checking out the competition.
There are a number of more feature rich, cross platform messaging apps out there including ones offering end to end encryption such as Telegram (Our choice here at Ausdroid), WhatsApp, Signal and loads more.
Not happy. They keep closing down things I used – Reader, Latitude, G+ (admittedly I didn’t use it that much), Inbox and now Hangouts. Never trying their products again.