Use Hangouts to keep in touch. Message contacts, start free video or voice calls, and hop on a conversation with one person or a group. • Include all your contacts with group chats for up to 150 people. Hangouts bring conversations to life with photos, emoji, and even group video calls for free. Connect with friends across computers, Android, and Apple devices.
Google Hangouts running on Initial release May 15, 2013; 5 years ago ( 2013-05-15) Android 23.0.172956998 / November 12, 2017; 8 months ago ( 2017-11-12) Android (Dialer) 0.1.100944346 / September 1, 2015; 2 years ago ( 2015-09-01) Android (Meet) 9.0.174253055 / November 13, 2017; 7 months ago ( 2017-11-13) Android Wear 17.0.145656208 / February 1, 2017; 17 months ago ( 2017-02-01) iOS 20.0.0 / November 2, 2017; 8 months ago ( 2017-11-02),,, or any browser compatible with, Website Google Hangouts is a developed by which includes,, and features. It replaces three messaging products that Google had implemented concurrently within its services, including, Messenger (formerly: Huddle), and Hangouts, a video chat system present within Google+. Google has also stated that Hangouts is designed to be 'the future' of its telephony product,, and integrated some of the capabilities of Google Voice into Hangouts. Users can be messaged by their accounts.
Contents • • • • • • • History [ ] Prior to the launch of Hangouts, Google had maintained several similar, but technologically separate messaging services and platforms across its suite of products. These have included the enterprise-oriented (based on ), Messenger, and the Hangouts feature of Google+, which provided chat, voice, videoconferencing features. However, its increasingly fragmented and non-unified suite of messaging offerings was also facing growing competition from services such as,, and. A decision was made to scrap the existing Google Talk system and code a new messaging product through a collaboration with multiple development teams. Following reports that the new service would be known as 'Babel', the service officially launched as Hangouts during the conference on May 15, 2013. On February 16, 2015, Google announced it would be discontinuing Google Talk and instructed users to migrate to the Hangouts app on the Chrome browser platform.
In January 2016, Google discouraged using Hangouts for SMS, recommending to instead use Google's 'Messenger' SMS app. In May 2016, at 2016, Google announced two new apps:, a messaging app with AI capabilities (AI-powered bots and selfie features ) and, a video calling app. Google has since confirmed that the new apps will not replace Hangouts; Hangouts will remain a separate product. Google's will ship with Google Duo and Allo instead of Hangouts. On January 6, 2017, Google announced that the Google Hangouts API will shut down on April 25, 2017.
On March 9, 2017, Google announced that it would be evolving Hangouts into two products: Hangouts Meet and Hangouts Chat. Hangouts Meet would focus on video conferences and Hangouts Chat would be focused on instant messaging with additional features such as bot assistant and threaded messaging. Features [ ]. A video conference meeting facilitated by Google Hangouts Hangouts allows conversations between two or more users. The service can be accessed online through the or Google+ websites, or through available for Android and iOS (which were distributed as a successor to their existing Google Talk apps). However, because it uses a proprietary protocol instead of the protocol used by Google Talk, most third-party applications which had access to Google Talk do not have access to Google+ Hangouts.