Quote:Rumors started to circulate in 2018 that Google planned to shut down its Hangouts service in the future to focus on other chat applications. Google did not deny the rumor but made it clear back then that it had plans to migrate users to the then-Enterprise products Hangouts Meet and Hangouts Chat by making these products available to consumers.

The company published details about the change yesterday on the official Google Suiteblog. According to the information posted there, classic Hangouts will be retired for Google Suite customers in October 2019.

Google plans to make the change for Google Suite customers first. The company revealed that Google customers who don't use Google Suite will also be transitioned to free Chat and Meet applications but did not publish a timeline for the migration yesterday.

As far as Google Suite is concerned, the timeline is as follows:

• April 16, 2019 -- Administrator action may be required.
  
  
• Between April and September 2019 -- Chat will get features from classic Hangouts.
  
  
• October 2019 -- Classic Hangouts will be retired for G Suite customers.
  

G Suite Administrators find a new management setting under Apps > G Suite > Hangouts Chat to disable the classic Hangouts interface early. Another important change is that Chat retention rules will protect chat messages in classic Hangouts and Chat from April 16, 2019 onward. Classic Hangouts messages were protected by the Mail retention settings previously.

Full reading: https://www.ghacks.net/2019/01/23/google-reveals-timeline-for-hangouts-termination-and-migration/