Early on Sept. 1 (Sept. 2 in the Philippines), Google finally began shutting down its Hangouts messaging service, warning users to download their data to ensure that none of their messages and conversations are lost in the transition to Google Chat.
Google accountholders received the following message in their email inboxes:
| Earlier this year, we announced that all Hangouts users would be upgraded to Google Chat. As the last step of the upgrade, starting November 1, 2022, Hangouts on the web will be upgraded to Chat on the web. We are emailing you because some of your conversations or portions of conversations won’t automatically migrate from Hangouts to Chat. If you wish to keep your Hangouts conversations, we strongly encourage you to use Google Takeout and download your data before January 1, 2023 when Hangouts data will be deleted. Rest assured that Hangouts on the web and your conversations there will remain accessible in Hangouts until November 1, 2022. |
The transition is likely to happen in phases, so it’s not clear as of posting time when any particular user or group of users will be affected.
