After reports of Google shutting down Hangouts to consumers in 2020, Google’s Scott Johnston who runs Hangouts and other related products has denied the reports, however, said that users of consumer Hangouts users will be “upgraded” to Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet which are enterprise-focused products.
2/ So while that will result in the eventual shut down of Hangouts classic (as we now call it), it doesn’t imply we are ending support for the use case supported by the product: messaging and meetings.
— Scott Johnston (@happyinwater) December 1, 2018
This indirectly for the first time confirms that Hangouts Classic will be shutting down “eventually.” Meaning, all the existing Hangouts classic users will be upgraded to Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet which are enterprise related products that fill a different need, and the legacy Hangouts which is now available for consumers will be shut down eventually. Google says that it is “fully committed to supporting classic Hangouts users” until a ‘successful’ migration to the new services. No timeline for the transition was provided yet.
In a statement, Google said:
In March 2017, we announced plans to evolve classic Hangouts to focus on two experiences that help bring teams together: Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet. Both Chat and Meet are available today for G Suite customers and will be made available for consumer users, too. We have not announced an official timeline for transitioning users from classic Hangouts to Chat and Meet. We are fully committed to supporting classic Hangouts users until everyone is successfully migrated to Chat and Meet.