Google delays Hangouts closure because no-one is ready, including Google

Chris Merriman
@ChrisTheDJ
22 August 2019

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GOOGLE HANGOUTS, the little messenger nobody loved, has had a stay of execution.

Originally, Google was planning to retire the original Hangouts for G Suite users in October 2019, with customers migrating onto the newer Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet apps (because why have one messenger app when you can have seven, eh Google?). However, the company has now confirmed that the migration is off until June 2020.

Once again, it's down to that old millstone that seems to surround tech companies: the new product isn't ready to do everything the old product did. It's true - as true as YouTube Music not offering migration of paid library music, or 'Works With Google' not offering the same flexibility that 'Works With Nest' did.

What it does mean is that the original Hangouts, which hasn't really had much TLC in the last few years, 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, just to confuse everyone.

Regular Joes need not worry - Google has promised to keep supporting Hangouts Classic for consumers - something it wasn't keen on doing until it realised that Google Allo and its completely separate contacts list wasn't going to cut it in a world already overloaded with WhatsApp, Signal and Messenger.

Google says that this delay is because it wants to give organisations more time to migrate their services. In reality, it's because Google wants more time to get Hangouts II up to scratch, and hopefully lure organisations that way.

It would just be nice if Google found a single messaging service that did everything and threw itself into that. This whole saga is getting a bit tiresome. µ