As announced earlier this year, Google Hangouts has finally been shutdown for good. The web app stopped working on November 1, 2022, as earlier announced by Google.
Google Hangouts will finalize its transition to Google Chat by redirecting the original Hangouts web app to Chat. Google says on a support page that hangouts.google.com will close and redirect to chat.google.com.
Access to Hangouts on the web will be available until November 1, 2022. After that time, users will be redirected to Chat on the web.
Google Support page
The Google Hangouts web app was the last remaining Hangouts experience available as Google first shut down the classic Hangouts experience on mobile devices in July of this year. The Android and iOS Hangout apps stopped working and directed users to download Google Chat.
The experience of using Google Chat isn’t drastically different, as it still offers Google account-based messaging to your contacts, and pulls your chat history from the older service.
The main difference on the mobile app was that, for a time, Hangouts doubled as an SMS client and offered support for VoIP phone calls as well. This was one of the many times Google tried but ultimately failed to take on Apple’s iMessage.
Google’s attention on messaging has since split into consumer and business focuses, with the consumer side primarily handled by Google Messages and RCS.
While most of the messages and contacts will be automatically transferred over to Google Chat, all of the data won’t migrated. The company notes that users should use Google Takeout to download and save a copy of their data. Users have until January 2023 to keep their Hangouts data.
How To Store Your Hangouts Data With Google Takeout
Downloading your Google Hangouts data is pretty straightforward. Here’s how to go about it:
- On your device, head to Google Takeout on the web.
- Click Deselect all at the top since we only want to export Hangouts data.
- Scroll down until you see Google Hangouts. Check the box to the right of it.
- Click or tap Next Step.
- Since this is likely one of the last times you’ll use Hangouts, leave Export once selected.
- Choose your file format from the drop-down menu as well as the max size per file.
- Click or tap Create export.
- Wait for Google to create an export file. This process could take hours or even days. This process is done server-side, so you can leave and check your email later on for the file.
- Tap or click Download next to your export.
