Google has a reputation for killing its apps tastelessly. Hangouts, however, has survived the ax despite Google’s deliberation of shutting it down – or replacing it with apps named after it – for over three years now. Since then, it has been talking about “upgrading” users from the classic Hangouts app to Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet. Last year, Google pushed the deadline for making users switch over to the new platforms but it may have finally started getting rid of the previous lineage. A new report suggests that Hangouts Meet may be rebranded to simply Google Meet as we move closer to the migration date.
The Hangouts Meet support page now refers to the service as “Google Meet.” Starting from the header, Meet is now Google Meet in the recently added parts of the webpage and Android Police notes that these changes were made “very recently.” But, the Hangouts branding has not been omitted entirely and we can still see it in the headline and older parts of the documentation.
Hangouts Chat is still called the same and the exclusive treatment for Meet makes sense because it is projected as a solution for enterprise users. When competing with services like Zoom and Skype, Google Meets is likely to be received much better with the new branding as compared to an app rising from the ruins of Hangouts’ dented branding.
For G Suite users, Google plans to commence the transition from the classic Hangouts to the newer platforms in June 2020. For free users too, the transition is expected to begin in 2020 itself but the exact timelines are yet to be shared.
Chat, which would replace the classic Hangouts panel in Gmail for both – G Suite and free users – might also follow the suit in the future, especially since it is intended to challenge much more reputed and celebrated services like Slack and Microsoft Teams.
In the meantime, Google is also letting G Suite users enjoy premium features in Google Meet till September 30th and this is perhaps to keep the workflow unrestricted in spite of the restrictions due to COVID-19.
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