42
votes
Google Hangouts for consumers will shut down in 2020
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- Title
- 2019 is your last year to use Google Hangouts if you haven't moved on already
- Authors
- Stephen Hall
- Published
- Nov 30 2018
- Word count
- 347 words
Google Talk was at a golden time. Most of Android users are logged in with a Gmail account, and most devices ran Google Talk out of the box, so many users were easily reachable. Then Hangouts used to be also an SMS app. After that messaging on Android went bonkers. I have people spread over several chat apps
This effectively kills Google Voice as well. Unless they drastically improve the Google Voice Chrome extension (note that it only does outbound calling and is seriously outdated - it doesn't have threaded SMS, much less the ability to receive calls), I can't respond easily to texts from my desktop and receive calls. The Google Voice app is terrible compared to Hangouts, so if they provide no replacement for desktop use, I see no reason to continue using Google Voice.
Does anyone know of any consumer alternatives to Google Voice? Preferably one that also supports SMS/MMS and has a desktop app that works on Windows and Linux (or a Chrome extension).
Edit: all of this also applies to Project Fi, which integrates really well into Google Hangouts. The "replacements", Hangouts Chat & Hangouts Meet, do not list Google Voice integration in the official feature sheet from Google. Is Voice going to be the next app on Google's chopping block?
If you find one, drop me a message or a mention. I'm in the same situation as a heavy Google voice user.
You could use a VoIP provider like Ringcentral, but it is a pretty expensive option.
I have never been a Talk or Hangout user, but I can still relate to everyone upset over this news since I experienced the same with Google Reader... and I am still salty AF that they shut that down. :(
One of the better pieces of tech that Google has had. Popular and easy to use. People were even using Hangouts for Dungeons and Dragons games!
Yeah I might not be considered a heavy user but I spend between 1 and 2 hours on hangouts weekly with an artist I collaborate with who lives several hundred miles away.
I can't say I'm thrilled about this news but it's just Google being Google again. I keep fooling myself into using their products and thinking this time will be different. But every damn time it's just a countdown to the day when they get bored and shut it all down.
Firefox hello was another good video chat, but it's dead now too. Guess we all gotta go back to skype.
I've had good luck with Discord lately. Skype seems to have been on a steady decline since Microsoft bought it up.
So does that kill all of Google's messaging products 100%?
More or less. Who's going to migrate to a Google messaging app knowing they'll have to migrate off in a couple years?
Curious, anyone know of companies using Hangouts in an enterprise capacity? Wonder if that product has any chance of surviving.
We are a small company, but we own the Gsuite product and use Hangout chat. So far I haven't gotten any notifications about it being EoL'd, but I'll keep an eye out.
I hope they keep it alive...chats are archived/saved just like emails in Gsuite's Vault product, making it really simple to do review things for HR/compliance/etc. Not sure what we'll do if it goes away...
So they're doing the old Google trick of not informing Enterprise/business customers for a bit?
It will remain for businesses. They're just shutting it down for consumers.
I know a number of my SMB customers are using it and I have one Enterprise customer using heavily.
If so, what were they even thinking? Did they make money from all these impulsive attempts to make new chat apps? Or it's the lack of organization? Or maybe they collected more user data this way? They could just have Google Talk and make it perfect.
No, there's still Allo (and Duo for video/voice chat). Besides, they're not shutting down Hangouts, it's just becoming a business-only service.
What messaging apps will people switch to?
Signal seems kind of like a no-go for Hangouts users because of the phone number requirement.
Telegram is iffy because it seems to always be under pressure by various governments.
I tried Riot.IM for a while but it's not really a polished experience, kind of slow, not sure I would recommend it to non-techy friends.
Other Google chat apps are effectively DOA because people have caught on to Google's lack of interest in long term maintenance.
A redesign is under way in Riot that should make it look better than the mess it is now
eta - redesign progress
eta 12/28/18 - Preview at https://riot.im/experimental
eta 2019 - redesign is live
How about Wire? It's usually what privacy-conscious people use if they don't want to use a phone number. I've also heard of XMPP, another decentralized protocol (list of clients). And if you're open to P2P messaging, there's Ricochet and Tox.
I absolutely love Wire but when we're talking about Google Hangout I suppose group video chat might be an important feature one would want to keep, which sadly, Wire only provides for business accounts.
That being said, I'd consider it the number one replacement for for any of the major messengers as it is nearly as secure as Signal (FOSS, based on (older version of the) Signal protocol, forward secrecy, etc.) while also being really QoL feature rich, more so than WhatsApp.
Also bonus points for not relying on a telephone number and having a stand alone desktop client.
How about rocket.chat? It's open source and has mobile app. Seems to be a Slack alternative.
https://rocket.chat/
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=chat.rocket.android&hl=en_US
https://github.com/RocketChat/Rocket.Chat
Rocket.Chat is great as a slack alternative but not so great as a one-to-one messenger. Plus it only supports text and not (video) calling.
In my opinion, Matrix (Riot.IM) is the only reasonable answer - but the general public never seems interested in adopting reasonable platforms.
Its a fair bit faster since I started using it and there is a redesign in the works that looks great.
Also Discord is popular
Discord is something I've written about before:
What I'd really like is a program that interconnects with other chat programs/services/platforms. Trillian was/is almost successful here, but my perception is that it started to deteriorate as a viable option right around the time Microsoft discontinued the capability to use the program to interact with Skype users. With that, interoperability with Windows Live Messenger was also discontinued. Trillian also cannot be used to interact with users of other programs like Discord or Steam. It's also closed source software (and uses a lousy encryption implementation).
Chat on the Internet is not hard (there are reasons why IRC is still used - which is awesome), but linked to a commercial company with financial interests in developing and maintaining as much control as they can over its users and suddenly you've got a recipe for an invitation for the program in question to be susceptible to anti-user business decisions that ultimately have a negative impact on user experience - especially if that organization is VC funded like Discord is.
Discord is good for a lot of things true. But it's more of a multi-user chat and doesn't capture the one-on-one messaging aspect of Hangouts that well, and requires a bit of setup for users (creating server, setting permissions, etc.). I don't like their huge VC debt either; makes me wary about their future.
Probably different Hangouts users will migrate to different services depending on their needs, so a large number may well indeed end up on Discord.
Hangouts satisfies multiple use cases in a way that other chat/messaging services don't. It's a shame Google is only looking at the bottom line and ignoring the fact that Hangouts is a pretty fantastic service that helps keep users loyal to the big G brand.
Discord is shit. It's nothing but web-based IRC powered by surveillance capitalism, and too many people only care that it has a slick UI and is easy to use. They haven't learned anything from the past ten years.
It's unfortunately too easy to get enamoured by a slick UI. I'm surprised we haven't seen more 3rd parties offer hosting and support and consulting for hosting group chats. It's obviously a viable business model since Slack and Discord are raking in the cash. Why don't we see more companies that act like 3rd party Wordpress or Drupal consultancies? Sell a $10/month hosting plan for a Riot.im/Zulip/open-source group chat + $5 for extras or $100/hr for custom theme work or whatever.
As I understand, Slack is doing exactly what you propose: paid hosted chat.
On the other hand, do you have any source for Discord "raking in the cash"? AFAIK they aren't making much money from their free chat product, hence the recent news of them creating a game store to sell games.
Unless you are talking about VC investments which doesn't really count IMO, since that's a debt liability.
Yep, and it seems to work out really well, so more free/open source software companies should be getting into it.
I thought they had some kind of subscription offering for hosting servers, similar to Slack in some respects?
Discord currently have two Nitro subscription tiers, $10/mo for access to games and $5/mo for some "enhanced chat perks." I'm guessing since they introduced the games to it it's making quite a bit more than when it was only chat. But it's probably still a relatively small amount since most people own the games elsewhere.
Here's some guy's guess at Discord's revenue as of July 2017: https://medium.com/tnlmedia/why-discord-was-able-to-raise-50m-at-a-700m-valuation-7965ae100f41 - $1 million despite valuation of $700 million. Of course it's just a guess but clearly they are relying on a big exit to make money, after which they'll have to scramble, and probably add ads everywhere, to pay back the investors.
keybase seems good so far.
Is it easy to get non-techy people to sign up for Keybase? It is cool in tech circles but their chat service doesn't get much press that I've seen. It also requires an installation and no web app that I can tell, which is a bummer (although probably has some justification from a security standpoint).
So it does have an android client but yea I don't think you're going to sell it to people who have used discord and don't care about their privacy.
I 'm thinking more and more about Nextcloud. I have it installed on my RPi and it comes with a IM feature. Haven't used it a lot yet though.
It's frustrating Google didn't focus on Allo and Duo. Why they want to kill Hangouts is just baffling as they could monetize it and make cash. It's better than anything out there.
There is absolutely nothing preventing Google from scraping your Allo and Duo chats for data to use in ad targeting, particularly through the Assistant integration. By making Hangouts enterprise-only, Big G is making privacy a paid service.
As usual, the Google ecosystem, whatever its benefits to the end users in "free", useful products, is really about mining your life for all it's worth.
I don't get it. Why does Google keep killing popular products?
Because Google only has one product that actually makes money: Google Ads. Any product that doesn't directly support Google Ads is under existential threat at all times.
Wasn't it announced that Hangouts was going to be focusing on enterprise rather than consumer audience some six months ago?
Yup, but the implication was that enterprise features would be the focus and the consumer Hangouts would just continue on....
Google was supposed to bring balance to the force, not leave it in the Darkness.
God, what an utter bitch. I've been using hangouts with google voice for years. Is there going to be an alternative message service or is Google voice dead? Is there any other comparable VoIP service that can connect to the telephone and SMS networks over multiple devices?
That's a shame. My SO and I started talking on Google Talk, and while we have moved on to other applications, it's still a shame that they're shutting it down.
This isn't actually Google's video service shutting down.
They're sunsetting Hangouts in favor of Meet and Chat, which will be opened up to consumers.
It's effectively a name change (and a changed app and backend). People shouldn't be freaked out.
People would be less freaked out if the product Google says they're transitioning Hangouts users to—Google Chat—was available outside the enterprise. "We're killing this thing you use and transitioning you to a product that's not available to you, but will be soon, we promise" does not engender confidence.