Google postpones Hangouts shutdown for G Suite users

Google will let G Suite customers continue to use Hangouts until next year, thus delaying the shutdown scheduled to begin in October. Hangouts will now remain for business customers until at least next June.

This shutdown will allow Google's G Suite business customers to turn to two new chat services: Hangouts Chat, a Slack competitor; and Hangouts Meet, a video conferencing service. Although services usually include the same (and more) features, users are more used to Hangouts and Google reports that IT teams in the companies said they "would like to have more time to migrate." [their] organizations, from classic Hangouts to live chats. "

Google says it is now considering starting the transition of all G Suite users to the new services by the end of next year.

To ease the transition, Google says it will work to add more features to the classic Hangouts. For now, Hangouts users can only send messages directly to a live chat user. In the future, Google suggests that conventional users can also view or participate in group discussions.

For now, none of this has an impact on consumer accounts: these changes only affect business users. "No changes will be made to the mainstream version of Hangouts Classics," Google wrote in a support document. "We continue to support consumers."

Since Google has constantly changed its messaging strategy, it's quite possible that it will change later.