Google may drop ‘Hangout’ branding soon as it shifts focus to Meet

Google had launched Hangouts in 2013 as a replacement of G Chat.

It’s worth noting that Google has often referred Hangouts Meet as just Meet. (REUTERS)

Google has been experimenting with its messaging functionality for years. Remember Google Talk? The company over the years has bet on Hangouts only to launch a Meets platform later. Currently, Google has Hangouts and Hangouts Meet. This, however, may change very soon.

According to 9to5Google, the company is going to soon drop the Hangouts branding altogether. It pointed out that the company is now referring Hangouts Meet as Google Meet on its support landing page.

It's worth noting that Google has often referred Hangouts Meet as just Meet. Google may already be planning to shut down Hangouts by the end of this year. Hangouts was launched as a replacement for G Chat in 2013.

"Last spring Google announced its pivot for the Hangouts brand to enterprise use cases with Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet, so the writing has been on the wall for quite some time regarding the Hangouts consumer app's demise," 9to5Google reported in 2018.

The latest report comes at a time when Google's Meet workplace conferencing app has registered a big spike in usage due to the Covid-19 pandemic and users working from home.

Google has registered a roughly 60% surge in usage of its Hangouts Meet.

"As more and more businesses rely on connecting an at-home workforce to maintain productivity, we've seen surges in the use of Google Meet, our video conferencing product, at a rate we've never witnessed before. Over the last few weeks, Meet's day-over-day growth surpassed 60%, and as a result, its daily usage is more than 25 times what it was in January," the company said in a post.