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Like it or not, the death of Hangouts is well and truly underway. Earlier today, we reported on the ongoing transition to Google Chat, as users are now prompted to switch apps before being signed out of their account in favor of messaging directly in Gmail. As more and more Hangouts users are pushed out of their preferred method of communication, the chat list on the Play Store is bombarded with reviews into oblivion.
Currently, the app gets a 2.8-star rating, with the majority of recent reviews only rated one or two stars (via Droid-Life). While some crowdsourcing efforts to lower an app’s rating can often seem out of place, most of the complaints to Google here seem valid. As of yet, Chat has simply not achieved feature parity with the service it replaces. Many reviewers point out that it lacks customization options, SMS support, stickers, and a dedicated gallery browser for attaching media. Hell, it doesn’t even support sending more than one image in a single message.
It’s not like this is the first time that Google has swapped an existing app for a new one without a 1: 1 match, but unlike YouTube Music, there doesn’t seem to be any promise of bringing these missing features into the business-oriented replacement. .
For its part, Google responds to user feedback with the following message:
Salvation, [name]. Thank you for taking the time to provide feedback. We are sorry to hear that. We will pass this on to the team so that they can review and further improve the Chat app. We ask that you submit your comments in the Chat application by clicking on the Menu button, then on “Help & feedback” and pressing “Send feedback”. Thank you!
This is a vague statement at best, with no promise of significant improvements to the app. Ultimately, Chat remains a business-focused platform, and the decision to move a large audience of regular users to it without sanding down the hard edges was a mistake. Some of the complaints are obvious solutions – any messaging app, whether it’s for business or not, should be able to select images from a gallery.
If you have similar issues with Chat after the change, you can add your account back to Hangouts for now. However, with Google promising permanent change this fall for everyone, this problem will only grow in magnitude unless the company actually addresses some of these complaints head-on.
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