On the 9th of April, Google confirmed that it was officially rebranding Hangouts Chat in its enterprise G Suite to Google Chat. While this does not mean that GChat is making a comeback, rather the branding change applies only to the enterprise version of Google’s products.
The move comes after Google Hangouts Meet, the video calling app was renamed to Google Meet. The Hangouts branding has been dropped from the GSuite officially. GSuite is the paid enterprise version of Google’s service and includes access to Gmail, Google Docs, Sheets, etc. but for enterprises or companies.
Google first confirmed about the rebranding to The Verge. And according to a Google spokesperson “There will be no changes to the consumer (classic) version of Hangouts,” which means the Hangouts brand name continues for the regular consumer version of Gmail.
Regular users will continue to have access to the Hangouts version designed for consumers. Hangouts, which was formerly known as GChat, used to be very a popular messaging service until it lost the game to apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger.
What has changed In Google Chat?
Google has dropped the Hangouts branding for its Chat service on the enterprise service only. The Google Chat is designed for productivity, rather than for the one-on-one messages on Google Hangouts in the regular version of Gmail.
Google Chat on GSuite has features some specific productivity features like Rooms, which is designed for teams of an organization. Members in a Room can share files, message other team members. Google Chat has bots that let users access other apps, assign tasks, schedule meetings, just like other messaging services like Slack.
For video calling and conferencing, Google has the Google Meet app, which was earlier called Google Hangouts Meet. The Meet service is limited to paid users who have the enterprise version. Google Meet has seen an incredible surge in the number of users, due to the new work from home norms that are prevailing all over the world due to the pandemic.
Google had also announced that it was making advanced Google Meet video-conferencing capabilities available at no cost to all G Suite and G Suite for Education customers, which has been lengthed till September 30, 2020.