Google Chat will replace Hangouts for the users of Google Workspace from March 22, 2022. Google is ready to push its final phase of migration from Classic Hangouts to Google Chat, a Workspace blog post revealed. The change will impact Google Workspace customers, as well as legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers.
Google will turn on the ‘Chat preferred’ setting and make Google Chat – the default chat application. The blog post read that the users will be directed to the Chat app when they visit classic Hangouts in Gmail on the web or the classic Hangouts mobile apps. It also stressed, “It is not possible to opt-out of the change.” However, hangouts.google.com will continue to work.
If the Workspace organisation’s Admin console setting remains as ‘Chat and classic Hangouts’, it will be automatically upgraded to ‘Chat preferred’ setting over a period of three weeks starting from March 22, 2022. With ‘Classic Hangouts only’ setting, the transition will commence over a course of five weeks starting from April 4, 2022.
However, the users may upgrade prior to those dates if they choose. The Google Workspace blog post clarified that the messages sent in classic Hangouts will continue to be retained and will be held searchable and exportable with Gmail search in Vault.
According to the Workspace blog post, except for a few special cases, all the conversation history will be migrated from Hangouts to Google Chat. Any new spaces created on Google Chat within the domain will not reflect in classic Hangouts from the mid of March 2022.
Published on
February 24, 2022
