Google Hangouts is going to reach its end for consumers in 2020, according to a report from 9to5Google. Hangouts has seen allot of changes ever since Google launched the service in 2013 as a replacement for the Gchat app, and since its launch it lost allot of features in the last years as Google stopped updating the app and removed maybe the most important feature, the ability to send SMS messages.
Google mentioned, although discreatly, that it is going to give up its own consummer messaging app back in april 2018 when they announced a new chat feature withing Android Messages. The RCS messaging featre is not officially available as the timing of making it available depends strongly on the carriers, but reports of RCS messaging support fit the timing for the end of life for Hangouts in 2020
The shut down of Google Hangouts for consumers is going to impact almost everyone that uses Android. Of course there are some that don’t use Hangouts and preffer WhatsApp, Androind Messages or Allo for text messages but there are going to be allot of upset people because Hangouts was really an awesome option for many of them. Why? Well it did not require a phone number, just your Gmail address, so you could actually use the app on a tablet that did not have a phone number, making the use of the app much more easyer to use for many categories of people.
Google likely won’t announce that it is shutting down the service until sometime next year. Usually these things get announced about a year, before it actually shuts down. Like Google+, it was announced a few months ago, and it is being shut down in the Spring of next year. Now is a good time to start looking at some other messaging apps out there. WhatsApp is a good option since it is available on virtually every platform, however the fact that it is owned by Facebook is going to steer some people away from it.
Although the app is going away for sure for normal consumers, and will only remain available for enterprise users, nothing is mentioned about its availability withing Gmail. There are allot of unknowns yet and allot of details that are not well clarified so we will have to wait for further comments from Google until we can know for sure what is really going to happen with Hangouts in the future.