Google Hangouts

One messenger to rule them all, briefly

Replaced
19902026

Google Hangouts unified Google's messaging in May 2013, absorbing Talk and Google+ Messenger into one app for chat, SMS and group video. Google then splintered it into Allo, Duo, Meet and Chat, and after years of slow decay retired Hangouts on 1 November 2022.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2013
  2. 15 May 2013 Launch
    Hangouts launches at I/O

    Google Talk and Google+ Messenger merge into one messenger.

  3. 2014
  4. February 2014 Feature
    SMS and Voice integration

    Hangouts becomes the default SMS app on Android.

  5. 2016
  6. 21 September 2016 Decline
    Allo and Duo arrive

    Google's consumer messaging focus moves elsewhere.

  7. 2017
  8. 9 March 2017 Rebrand
    Split into Chat and Meet

    Hangouts is re-targeted at enterprise; consumer app enters maintenance.

  9. 2020
  10. 9 April 2020 Decline
    Meet goes free for everyone

    The pandemic winner is Hangouts' own successor.

  11. 2022
  12. 27 June 2022 Shutdown announced
    Final migration announced

    Remaining users pushed to Google Chat.

  13. 1 November 2022 Shutdown
    Hangouts retires

    The Google Talk lineage ends after 17 years.

The site through time

Browse hangouts.google.com as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2013 2015 2017 2019 2021 2022 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

Google 2013–2022 Founded Successor to Google Talk; replaced by Google Chat

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: Google migrated the last Hangouts users to Google Chat, retiring Hangouts on 1 November 2022.

Our analysis: Hangouts was actually the unifier Google kept promising, then Google un-unified it: Allo, Duo, Meet and Chat each took a piece, and the original was left to decay for half a decade before the plug was pulled.

History [edit]

The great unification

Announced at I/O 2013, Hangouts finally merged Google's messaging mess (Google Talk, Google+ Messenger, video Hangouts) into a single cross-platform app. It did chat, group video for ten people and later SMS and Google Voice integration. Group video hangouts, free and in the browser, were genuinely ahead of their time; talk shows and the White House ran public Hangouts On Air.

For a few years it was the closest thing Google ever had to iMessage: preinstalled on Android, integrated with Gmail, used by everyone with a Google account.

The great re-fragmentation

Then Google rebuilt the mess it had cleaned up: Allo and Duo launched in 2016 as the new consumer pair, Hangouts was re-aimed at businesses and split into Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet in 2017, and consumer Hangouts entered maintenance mode. Meet and Chat dropped the Hangouts name in 2020. The pandemic made Meet a household product while classic Hangouts decayed quietly. In June 2022 Google announced the final migration to Google Chat, and on 1 November 2022 Hangouts, the last direct descendant of 2005's Google Talk, shut down.

Similar projects

ICQ The messenger that gave you a number 1996–2024 MSN Messenger The sound of nudges after school 1999–2014 AIM Away messages and slammed doors 1997–2017 Yahoo Messenger Booted from the chat room one last time 1998–2018 Skype The app that made calling the world free 2003–2025 Google Allo Google's WhatsApp that wasn't 2016–2019

Sources [edit]

  1. Google Hangouts is shutting down this fall Engadget 27 June 2022 [archived]
  2. Say goodbye to Google Hangouts The Register 28 June 2022 [archived]

Last verified: 11 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).