It wasn’t all that long ago that Google was trying to push for an integrated social media network that would consist of Google+ and Hangouts with YouTube also potentially being integrated into this sort of thing.
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that none of these projects ended up succeeding apart from YouTube which ended up succeeding due to its ability to stand on its own.
This has resulted in Google scrapping Google+ entirely and it has also started the process of moving away from Hangouts by discontinuing it and replacing it with Google Chat which has been available to people using Google Workspace but has not been available to the public as of yet.
The announcement that Hangouts would eventually be discontinued came a while ago, but there haven’t been that many updates since. All of that changed with Google announcing that it is going to start beta testing Google Chat and seeing how Hangouts users end up responding to it.
All of this is being done in an attempt to streamline Google’s services and make it so that the services being used by Workspace users, which have already been optimized to a great extent, can be brought to the general public.
This sort of thing can only happen successfully if steps are taken to test the project out before people actually get the chance to use it, and the kind of responses that Google receives from this beta test is going to provide a lot of information on whether or not Google Chat is going to be able to roll out anytime soon. Chances are that this test will go well, though, since Google Chat has already proven to be popular among those that use the Workspace suite.
H/T: 9to5Google.
Read next: Google is reportedly testing out the infinite scrolling feature for mobile search results
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that none of these projects ended up succeeding apart from YouTube which ended up succeeding due to its ability to stand on its own.
This has resulted in Google scrapping Google+ entirely and it has also started the process of moving away from Hangouts by discontinuing it and replacing it with Google Chat which has been available to people using Google Workspace but has not been available to the public as of yet.
The announcement that Hangouts would eventually be discontinued came a while ago, but there haven’t been that many updates since. All of that changed with Google announcing that it is going to start beta testing Google Chat and seeing how Hangouts users end up responding to it.
All of this is being done in an attempt to streamline Google’s services and make it so that the services being used by Workspace users, which have already been optimized to a great extent, can be brought to the general public.
This sort of thing can only happen successfully if steps are taken to test the project out before people actually get the chance to use it, and the kind of responses that Google receives from this beta test is going to provide a lot of information on whether or not Google Chat is going to be able to roll out anytime soon. Chances are that this test will go well, though, since Google Chat has already proven to be popular among those that use the Workspace suite.
H/T: 9to5Google.
Read next: Google is reportedly testing out the infinite scrolling feature for mobile search results
