Google Chat will be the default chat app for paid Google Workspace accounts starting March 22. The mandatory migration phases out the classic Hangouts app.
Hangouts was supposed to be phased out in late 2019, but has been postponed until March 22. Hangouts users that haven’t migrated yet will be automatically redirected to Google Chat from that date onwards.
The mandatory migration exclusively applies to paid Google Workspace account holders. End users of free personal Google accounts are not affected by the change.
No opt-out
While the hangouts.google.com website will continue to function, the Android and iOS mobile apps will be disabled. Most chat history has already been migrated to the Google Chat environment. Newly created chats in Google Chat will not be visible in the classic Hangouts environment.
Companies that have their chat settings set to ‘Chat and classic Hangouts’ will be automatically switched to ‘Chat preferred’ on March 22. Business users whose settings are set to ‘Classic Hangouts only’ will be automatically migrated starting April 4.
4 hours ago
