Google: Hangouts users to be migrated to Hangouts Chat, Hangouts Meet

A Google product lead has responded to claims that Hangouts will be killed sometime in 2020, offering further insight into what may be replacing it.

G Suite real-time communications head Scott Johnston tweeted that the claims, laid out in a report by 9to5Google, were technically incorrect. Hangouts would not be shut down without having its current users migrated over to two of its existing solutions, Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet — both currently attracting productivity clients.

3/ As per your comment about the products being “entirely separate enterprise products,” this just represents a shallow understanding of the market and our products. Our apps are used by, consumers, enterprises, schools, governments, and the like.

— Scott Johnston (@happyinwater) December 1, 2018

Android Central‘s Ara Wagoner pointed out to Johnston that many Google properties are still referring users to what some would consider a “dying” service that has not had some of its confusing interfaces mended.

It doesn’t help that so many things are downright bizarre. If I want to search Hangouts for a reference or phrase, I have to search Gmail for it. I scrolled through three years of family chat (including a death in the family) searching manually for something.

— Ara Wagoner??? (@AraWagco) December 1, 2018

Johnston did not proffer a timeframe for the end of Hangouts classic.