Instead of the iOS and Android versions of Hangouts, you'll be pushed to the Google Chat apps, which both have better interfaces. On desktop, instead of or the Hangouts Chrome extension, there's, which is also an installable progressive web app. Starting today, most Google Hangouts clients will start pushing users to Google Chat. While most follow-ups to Google Hangouts have been severely lacking in comparable features, Google Chat is a decent upgrade to Google Hangouts, so there are Google Chat options for all the Hangouts clients you may have been using. After several delays, Workspace customers (the paid business version of Google apps) finally had Hangouts removed in March 2022, but regular consumers can still switch between Google Chat and Hangouts. Google announced in 2018 that Hangouts would eventually be shut down. The service fell out of favor with Google's legendarily fickle messaging strategy in 2016 with the launch of Google Allo. As Android's default messaging service, Hangouts amassed 5 billion downloads, and at one point, it even handled Android SMS duties, just like Apple's iMessage. The service launched in 2013 as an in-place upgrade to Google Talk. Further Reading A decade and a half of instability: The history of Google messaging appsThe shutdown of Hangouts has been a long time coming.
