Google Chat

Google Chat is a communication service developed by Google. Initially designed for teams and business environments, it has since been made available for general consumers. It provides direct message, group conversations, and spaces, which allow users to create and assign tasks and share files in a central place in addition to chatting. It can be accessed through its own website and app or through the Gmail website and app.

It was first launched as Hangouts Chat on March 9, 2017, as one of the two apps to constitute the replacement for Google Hangouts, the other being Google Meet. It was renamed to Google Chat on April 9, 2020. It was initially only available for the Google Workspace software suite, but in February 2021 Google began rolling out Google Chat in "early access" to regular consumer accounts until it became fully available in April 2021. Google deprecated the original Hangouts and replaced it with Chat on November 1, 2022.

History

Google Chat was first launched as Hangouts Chat on March 9, 2017, for Google Workspace (called G Suite until October 2020) customers only as a replacement for Google Hangouts. All G Suite packages had identical features except for a lack of Vault data retention in the Basic package.

On April 9, 2020, Google rebranded Hangouts Chat to Google Chat. Following this rebranding, and along with a similar change for Hangouts Meet, the Hangouts brand is to be removed from Google Workspace.

Migration from Hangouts

Google first announced their plan to begin retiring Google Hangouts in October 2019. In October 2020, Google announced that it would open Google Chat up to consumers in 2021. Google also announced that Hangouts conversations, contacts, and history would be migrated over to Google Chat.

Google Chat began to roll out to consumer accounts in "early access" in February 2021, but at the time Google stated that Hangouts would remain a consumer-level product for people using standard Google accounts. By April 2021, Google Chat became fully available for free as an "early access" service, for users who choose to use it instead of Hangouts.

In August 2021, Google started automatically signing out Google Hangouts users on iOS and Android and notifying them to switch to Google Chat.

Google planned to deprecate Google Hangouts and replace it with Google Chat in early 2022. In February 2022, Google announced plans to begin the final migration of all Google Workspace customers from Google Hangouts to Google Chat, which is scheduled to be finalized in May 2022. In September 2022, Google announced all Hangouts data would be deleted by January 1, 2023.

Features

Google Chat is divided into two sections, chat and spaces. The Chat section contains direct conversations with other people and group conversations. In addition to be able to access Google Chat from its website and app, Google Chat can also be accessed through its integration with the Gmail website and app.

In May 2022, Google announced that Chat would display banners warning users against potential phishing and malware attacks coming from personal accounts. This development for Google Chat was the latest attempt to prevent phishing and security breaches for users.

In July 2023, Google added new features to attain feature parity with other widely used instant messaging. The new chat features include: smart compose (also available in Gmail and Google Docs), editing & deleting of messages for consumer accounts (previously restricted to Google Workspace accounts only), message quoting, read receipts in group chats, text hyperlinking, hiding inactive conversations, ability to add apps from Google Workspace Marketplace for more features.