Google revealed yesterday that the transition for G Suite has been postponed and that the new deadline for Hangouts shutdown is June 2020. The Tech-Giant confirmed back in December that it will replace Hangouts with Chat and Meet, and announced that the transition will start in October 2019.
The decision to delay the move is based on the feedback received from many Hangouts users, who simply need more time to migrate their organizations from classic Hangouts to the new Hangouts Chat. In reality, it’s because Google wants more time to get Hangouts II up to scratch, and hopefully lure organizations that way.
Google said that it will provide advance notice once it figures out when it’s the right time to start the final transition of classic Hangouts to Hangouts Chat, this is just in case you need a more definitive date,
Additionally, for those who want to migrate sooner, Google has already begun the Accelerated Transition Program. You simply request an invitation and the classic Hangouts will be disabled and you’ll be migrated to Hangouts Chat.
The shutdown will move customers of Google’s business-focused G Suite subscription over to a pair of new chat services: Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet, a video conferencing service.
Despite the services generally including the same functionality and even many more people are rather used to Hangouts, and Google says it’s heard from companies’ IT teams that they’d “like more time to migrate their organizations from classic Hangouts to Hangouts Chat.
Google says it now plans to start transitioning all G Suite users over to the new services by the end of next year.
What this means for the original Hangouts, which hasn’t really had many updates in the last few years, is that it will be getting a few new tricks to allow it to co-exist with its successor.
Hangouts Classic will now be configured to let you join meetings held in new Hangouts, giving some sense of cohesion to the whole mess which still includes Google Duo as a separate offering.
Google has also promised to keep supporting Hangouts Classic for consumers. This is something it wasn’t keen on doing until it realized that Google Allo and its completely separate contacts list wasn’t going to cut it in a world already burdened with WhatsApp, Telegram and Messenger.
In the meantime, Google will continue to improve the transition experience of classic Hangouts group conversations and add new Chat features like Read receipts.