In a recent announcement from Google, it has been revealed that on March 13th 2019, Google Hangouts will come to an end. The announcement states the following:
“We need to let the SDKs point to different products where appropriate and stop maintaining them everywhere. So we’re announcing today that after March 2020, no more updates for the Google Hangouts API are planned.”
This sad news traveled throughout social media with many users bemoaning their own personal losses of a product with which they had grown so close. While some people found this news disappointing, others reveled in what this meant for messaging in general which is perhaps an even better thing than continuing a feature nobody misses in any case.
Of course, it is rather ironic that Google, which has a virtual monopoly on search and email, would discontinue the very thing that made it so successful in the first place. However like all monopolies, this is an inevitability. Henceforth this means that Gmail will be the only viable messaging solution for both users and businesses.
This development could also prove to be beneficial to some as it probably won’t be as hard to migrate over to another service as it was before. It is also a good thing in terms of competition which should lead to better services in the future.
For those who have been using the API, a shift to Google Chat will probably be easy to make. This will allow for an easy migration. If your company is still using Hangouts, it might also be time to move on but ironically if you’re Google and you’re discontinuing a product, this is a good thing since nobody else can use it anyway. Do what you can with what’s available and make the most of it.
On the other hand if your company doesn’t have any plans to upgrade or migrate away in the near future, I would say that now may be as good a time as ever to switch.
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