Google Hangouts is dead, half-baked RCS is not a replacement

Hangouts was an iMessage competitor

Hangouts has been slowly deprecated over the past year as the app stopped working for most users. The only remaining Hangouts tool was the web app, which closes down Tuesday, November 1.

Users who haven't completed the transition to Google Chat have until January 1, 2023, to save their data. According to Google's chat help page, most of a user's chats and data will automatically migrate to Google Chat, though not all of it.

Users who want to ensure they have all their Hangouts data will need to save it using Google Takeout.

1. Go to Google Takeout and sign in with the Google Account you use in Hangouts
2. Select Hangouts and deselect the other applications
3. Click "Next Step"
4. Choose "one-time download"
5. Choose the file type
6. Click "Export"
7. An email containing the Hangouts data file will be sent to you once data collection is complete

Google messaging has been a mess since its social media network Google+ imploded in late 2014. Google Hangouts was meant to be a unifying messaging platform that competed with iMessage, but Google's lack of focus and complaints from carriers led to a myriad of issues.

Despite being similar to iMessage with its web-based messaging that tied into SMS, carriers were not happy. Google was pressured into building a standalone SMS messaging app into Android in 2014 called Google Messages.

Since then, Google has started and abandoned multiple text and video chat applications. Hangouts has been active this entire time but lacked development or attention from the company.

Today, Google is fighting a different messaging battle, a transition from SMS to RCS. However, the company hasn't finished developing the standard, nor has it implemented it across its chat apps.

Hangouts closes its doors on November 1, 2022, so users must complete the above steps to save their entire chat history. The process must be completed before January 1, 2023, or Hangouts data will be lost forever.