Google Hangouts is shutting down, here are a few things you should know before migrating to Chats – Times of India

Google has been trying to replace the Hangouts since the launch of Google Chats. The company first migrated its Enterprise users to Chats and now it has confirmed that the free users will also have to make the move by the end of this year. The company has mentioned on its support page that the Hangouts on web will be available to users till October 2022 and it will also provide users enough time to either move to Chats or at least download the Hangout data via Google Takedown feature.
If you are looking to make the jump from Google Hangouts to Google Chats, here are a few things that you should know beforehand.
No manual data migration is required
Google has confirmed that most of the chat data including groups from Hangouts will be migrated to Google Chat automatically, except some chats or portions of chats. If you will be one of those users, Google will send you an email mentioning the same.
However, the key takeaway here is that there’s no manual process that is supposed to be done to migrate the data.
Bye bye Hangouts Chrome extension; welcome Chats Progressive web app
Google has also confirmed that users will lose access to Hangouts Chrome extension. However, Google Chats will have its own Progressive web app (PWA) that users can download, enable notifications and also set it to start automatically with the system. –
Google Chat is integrated in Gmail across the platform, but there’s a dedicated app for smartphones
Since the beginning of Google Chats, the company is continuously trying to integrate it deeply in its ecosystem of services. Following that idea, Google has integrated Chats in Gmail for web, Android and iOS apps.
However, Android and iOS also have a dedicated app for Google Chats, for someone who doesn’t want it to use in integrated mode.
Google Chats has an edge over Hangouts
Google Chats is a relatively new feature and it also includes Google’s latest set of features like Dark Mode, enhanced expression, ability to delete chats after they are sent, smart replies, @menitions, integrated search, GIF support and more.
Chats is also better overall integrated into Google’s ecosystem as it offers the ability to collaborate on docs, sheets, etc via Spaces, side-by-side editing and more.