Hangouts users were in for a big surprise after the tech giant announced that its instant messaging app was shutting down and that its place would be taken over by Google Chat .

As detailed by Xataka, the people who use this platform on their Android phones saw a message from the company, who did not provide the exact date on which this unexpected migration will occur.

“Your conversations from the last year are already in Google Chat and the old conversations will be available later,” can be read in the notification sent by the company based in Mountain View.

At the moment, it is unknown how long Hangouts will continue to work ; however, those users who do not want to wait any longer can migrate to the new platform from now on.

You just have to press the option switch to chat in Gmail so that your Hangouts session is closed on your phone. All your conversations will come out in the company’s email application.

Google announces the closure of Hangouts: messaging app will now be integrated into Gmail — Hangouts’s closing has no date yet. Photo: Xataka

Hangouts was the substitute for another messaging service

You may not remember it, but Hangouts came in 2013 and was the replacement for Google Talk . Due to the fact that it did not become popular in eight years, the platform will remain only as a tab in the Gmail app .

Another service launched by the internet giant, which was very popular in its beginnings, but which ended up losing the majority of users, was Google+ , a social network that was discontinued in April 2019.