Back in June this year, Google said they would close the Google Hangouts message app to make way for an improved Google Chats, which has now happened.
In October 2020 Google announced they would be revolutionizing their new messaging service, Google Chat, by making it available for everyone. But by promoting the new service Google had later issued an expiry date of their other messenger app, Google Hangouts, and that app has now completely shut down as promised back in the June announcement.
Product Manager of Google Chat, Ravi Kanneganti said: “For most people, conversations are automatically migrated from Hangouts to Chat, so it’s easy to pick up where you left off. However, we encourage users who wish to keep a copy of their Hangouts data to use Google Takeout to download their data before Hangouts is no longer available in November 2022 by following these instructions,” detailing methods for users to make the jump.
Although Hangouts has been in service for nine years, Google has outlined the easy method on how to switch data over to the Chat app from the now defunct Google Hangouts app with this following step list that can be found on their blog:
- Go to Google Takeout and sign in with the Google Account you use in Hangouts.
- In the available applications, select Hangouts and deselect the rest.
- Click Next Step.
- In the Delivery method, choose how often you want to download the backup. Since Hangouts is being upgraded to Google Chat soon, we recommend a one-time download.
- Choose the file type.
- Click Export.
- A message tells you that Google is creating a copy of files from Hangouts. You will receive an email when the takeout process is complete. Download the file to preserve your Hangouts data.
Users of the Google Hangouts app will have until January 2023 to switch their data over to the Google Chat app.
