Google Chat for the web is now being implemented in personal accounts

This story was originally published 2/21/25
6:01 PSTon February 25, 2021 and last update 2021/03/01
5:59 am PSTon March 1, 2021.

It has been a while since Google announced that it will split the Hangout into two separate services – Chat and Meet. For workspace accounts, the transition to Chat started last year, but personal account holders only received an inaccurate ETA from the “first half of 2021”. For some lucky ones, the migration started early, in August 2020, and continued throughout the year and early 2021 (we received dozens of tips from the original). Now things look more official, as Google is recognizing the transition and calling it a “preview” of Google’s chat.

Ars Technica’s Ron Amadeo is one of the first users to notice this and, according to him, all his contacts are available in the Chat app. This is in line with what we expected, as Google promised that conversations, contacts and saved Hangouts histories would be migrated automatically. Unfortunately – probably because it is a preview – group chats are not yet available.

My Google chat is now showing this Hangouts “preview” message.

It looks like all of my individual contacts work and can be accessed via the search bar.

The only feature that is missing now is group chat. pic.twitter.com/Vf8mLahrbE

– Ron Amadeo (@RonAmadeo) February 24, 2021

Ron also points out that video calls made through the app do not ring the receiver’s phone as an incoming call. Instead, they send an invitation link to a “video call”, which is not as convenient as it used to be with Hangouts. Although there is no guarantee, this peculiarity can be resolved when Google makes the chat app available to all free personal accounts.

The current “preview” release appears to be quite limited and none of my personal accounts have received it yet.