February 5, 2019
TO: Campus Community
FR: Matthew Hall, Associate Vice Chancellor of Information Technology and Chief Information Officer
RE: Google Hangouts is Now Hangouts Chat & Hangouts Meet
On the heels of its introduction to next-generation communication applications Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet, Google intends to phase out Hangouts this spring.
In 2017, Google introduced Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet for G Suite users, the “next generation of Hangouts that focuses on team communication.” Google will transition classic Hangouts users on G Suite domains to Chat and Meet this spring. But, users will not see major changes until this fall, when Google will retire classic Hangouts for G Suite customers.
Google and UCSB Enterprise Technology Services (ETS) will continue to support the use of classic Hangouts until the final transition to Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet.
“We are in constant contact with Google regarding the changeover and we will update the campus as more information becomes available,” said Shea Lovan, Identity and Collaboration Architect.
Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet offer users much of the same functionality as classic Hangouts with the same goal: to work and collaborate as a team seamlessly and effortlessly.
Hangouts Chat delivers a secure team messaging platform supporting individual and group conversations. Projects and threaded conversations can “live” in virtual rooms, simplifying progress tracking and follow-up tasks. Since it’s integrated with Calendar, users can “ask” the Meet bot in Hangouts Chat to schedule meetings.
Hangouts Meet provides a light, fast video conferencing platform that reduces “time to start” a meeting to zero. Users can join a meeting from Calendar, an email invite or a one-off share, according to the Google Products blog.
Read the announcement from Google regarding the classic Hangouts phase-out here.
It’s UCSB IT’s goal to provide excellent communication and collaboration technologies for our students, faculty, and staff. For questions regarding Connect G Suite for Education, visit the Connect website.