Search engine giant Google has made an announcement on its official blog saying that it has laid out a simplified messaging strategy for the future. The decision has been made so as to offer the customers a simpler and more unified communication experience. Google has said that it will just support five messaging apps , which is down from its current fleet of seven.
In order to cut down to five apps from seven, the search engine giant will be taking back Hangouts and Google Allo. On the other hand the services like Hangouts Chat, Messages, Hangouts Meet, Duo, and Google Voice will continue to be supported. The announcement by Google has come after the report from a leading daily said that the search engine would announce its quintuple-app strategy. The report had claimed that Google Hangouts would shut down some time in 2020.
Soon after, Scott Johnston from Google – a product lead for three of the seven messaging apps responded on the report and called it as shoddy reporting and added that it is only half of the story. While the search engine intends to shut down Hangouts, Johnston clarified that it is also planning to open up two of its enterprise-only messaging apps Hangouts Meet and Hangouts Chat. This will be for its consumer user base and the users of Hangouts will be transitioned to the two apps. The blog post also informed that the Classic Hangouts would shut down but the Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet would be opened.
Google added that it will not shut down Hangouts until it ensures a smooth transition between the apps. The post ahs also announced that Allo, the development of which was paused earlier in 2018 in favor of messages will be shut down in March 2019. When they are brought down, the Hangouts and Allo will join Google Wave, Google Spaces, Google + Messenger and Google Buzz which have been dumped by the search engine earlier.
Photo Credits: Cnet
