TL; PhD
- Google is now urging Hangouts users to switch to chat.
- You can still use the messaging app, but some features will be retired on August 16.
- Hangouts will be completely closed at the end of 2021.
If you are not ready to transfer to Chat at this stage, you can still use Hangouts. However, in the near future, you may not have many choices. Google warned Workspace users in July that if they did not migrate before August 16, they might lose some Hangouts features on August 16. For example, if your organization enables the “Chat preferred” option in Workspace, you will lose the Hangouts mobile app and Chrome extension.
If you do this, all your Hangout conversations will be available.
Apart from the vague “end of 2021” goal, there is no absolute deadline for the migration of Hangouts users to Chat. Nonetheless, it is clear that Google really, really wants to cancel the name Hangouts and integrate its often scattered messaging efforts.