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Google Hangouts might finally shut down in 2020 (Update #2: Google’s official response)
June 19, 2025
Update #2 (August 17, 2025 at 3:17 p.m. ET):A Google spokesperson reached out toAndroid Authoritywith the company’s official response on the Hangouts confusion:
Update #1 (July 30, 2025, 2:35 p.m. ET):In a surprising turn of events, Scott Johnston, Realtime Comms product lead in G Suite and head of Hangouts at Google, responded (somewhat aggressively) to9to5Google’sreport. After calling it “shoddy reporting,” Johnston went on in astring of tweets to confirmthat those still using the “classic” Hangouts will eventually be migrated to Hangouts Chat and Meet.
While this doesn’t confirm the rumored 2020 timeframe, it does endorse the report that Google does plan to shut Hangouts down eventually.
Original post (August 13, 2025, 3:34 p.m. ET)It’s been a long time coming, but Google might finally put the kibosh onHangoutsin 2020. According to9to5Google, citing sources familiar with Google’s roadmap, the legacy messaging app will shut down for consumers after next year. No specific timeframe was mentioned.
This shouldn’t really come as a surprise — in March 2017,Google announcedHangouts would split into two enterprise-focused apps:Hangouts MeetandHangouts Chat. Ever since that announcement, the company began winding down support for the consumer version of Hangouts. Itremoved SMS supportfrom the app in May 2017, urging users to instead useAndroid Messages. Hangouts also hasn’t received any notable updates for awhile, and manydie hard usershave been reporting bugs as of late.
Google isn’t giving up on consumer-facing chat apps though (let’s face it,it never will). Following the underwhelming push to makeGoogle Allocatch on, the companyannouncedits continued efforts to bringRCS featuresto as many carriers and smartphones as it can. The RCS standard is designed to improve messaging functionality that’s installed on smartphones by default. Down the line when RCS is widely adopted, you’ll be able to see read receipts, chat with multiple people without it being a horrible experience, and send media messages up to 10MB from your standard texting app.
If you’ve yet to wean yourself off Hangouts, now may be the time to do so. Feel free to check out ourbest messaging appslist if you need a replacement.
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