Google replaces Google Talk with Hangouts

Google has officially pulled the plug on its messaging application Google Talk (commonly referred to as Gchat) yesterday, forcing users to upgrade to Hangouts.

Google Talk which launched in 2005, was meant to provide a simple chat experience between Gmail users. Eight years later in 2013, Google launched Hangouts. As Google started transitioning Google Talk users to Hangouts back in 2013, users still had  the option to use Google Talk, until today.

Google said in a blog post in March, ''Hangouts offers advanced improvements over Google Talk such as group video calling and integration with other Google products. With the introduction of Hangouts Meet and Hangouts Chat, which add further improvements in meetings and team collaboration, it is now time to say goodbye to Google Talk.''

According to commentators, Hangouts Meet and Hangouts Chat were part of Google's effort to attract more enterprise users to its platform. With Hangouts Meet, a light video meeting web application, users can start meetings with just a shared link. Hangouts Chat was Google's answer to Slack and Microsoft Teams and provided ''dedicated, virtual rooms'' and threaded conversations. It also integrated with third-party applications.  Hangouts Chat also featured an intelligent bot, called @meet, that used natural language processing and machine learning to automatically schedule meetings with Hangouts Meet and Google Calendar. Both Hangouts Meet and Chat directly integrated with G Suite.

According to some commentators, the brilliance of Gchat was that it allowed users to instant message any Gmail user within a web browser, instead of using a separate application. This was a great boon to people a decade ago, who were online all day at their entry-level jobs in open offices even as their online activities were closely monitored. 

Users could open a separate browser window or a single tab, and keep Gchat running in the background as they ostensibly worked on projects and also engaged in personal communication.