Google Begins Removal Of Classic Hangouts App From Play Store

Synopsis – The tech giant’s plan to remove Hangouts was firstly announced in 2019 which after a series of postponements, was finally decided to begin in March and the company made the announcement through a blogpost

In the anticipated move, Google has started to remove Classic Hangouts from app stores. This means that the app of Classic Hangouts will no longer be available for new users searching on Google Play Store and Apple Store. However, the existing users who have the app installed on their smartphones can continue using it until the company offers the services.

Google had recently decided to move from the classic Hangouts to Google Chats for the users of Workspace (formerly known as G Suite) from March, 22 this year. The process has begun and the absence of the app from the app stores seems to be part of the same. 9to5Google was the first one to notice the change.

The website mentioned that the app is still working for the users who have installed it earlier. It also said that Google will disable the mobile apps of classic Hangouts in the upcoming weeks. It began with the company removing it for the users of iPad and iPhone while android users could still access it which later on was also not possible. 

The tech giant’s plan to remove Hangouts was firstly announced in 2019 which after a series of postponements, was finally decided to begin in March and the company made the announcement through a blogpost

 Google had said in the blog post – 

Beginning March 22, 2022, we’ll turn on the “Chat preferred” setting for any customers who haven’t already done so, making Google Chat the default chat application

Earlier, Google had rolled out an update for the users of Gmail who use it on android. The update presents a status bar icon that helps the users in order to identify if the message has come on Chats or Spaces. It is a significant change as before this whether a message has come on Chat or Spaces used to appear the same, now with the update, both kinds of messages would be identified with a little different icons

The blog post had further asserted, 

After domains are upgraded to ‘Chat preferred,’ all classic Hangouts applications, except hangouts.google.com, will be disabled. Additionally, the ‘Chat and classic Hangouts’ and ‘Classic Hangouts only’ settings will be removed from the Admin console.

“Except for a few special cases, all the conversation history from Hangouts will be available in Google Chat. However, starting mid-March 2022, any newly created spaces in Google Chat within your domain will not appear in classic Hangouts,” it added.