Google’s new Hangouts service to replace Gtalk messenger

The famous Gtalk messenger would soon shut down, to be replaced by Google's new Hangouts service, India Today reported. The report quoted Google as saying that the messenger service would end on 16 February 2015.

Google had broadcast the news in a message asking Gtalk users who had continued with the service to shift to the newer Google Hangouts. Users not making the change on their own would be migrated to Hangouts on the specified date.

The search company had initiated the shift, with the launch of Hangouts and had also called on users to download the new messaging platform instead of the dated Gtalk service. One of the reasons for users' reluctance to move to Hangouts was the fact that it took much longer to load and did not work on slower internet connections. According to commentators, Indian Gtalk users might not appreciate Google's shift to Hangouts due to slower data speeds than in other countries.

Google is under pressure from Facebook-owned Whatsapp, which, in a recent move, rolled out a web version of the application. Whatsapp was more suited to the Indian market asit  worked even on 2G speeds and had a broad user base of over 700 million users, something that the other apps did not offer.

Meanwhile, www.newsnation.in reported that Gtalk was unavailable for download from Google and all of a sudden Hangouts replaced the messenger, which led to confusion in the minds of most users. Users who attempted to download Gtalk were sent to the Google Hangouts download page.

Google had now made it clear officially, that Gtalk would not work from 16 February.