#My google hangouts history full

Assuming I find one that I like, that’s when the really hard part happens and is probably why I’m writing this post – getting everyone I know on Hangouts to switch over sounds like hell.

I’ve already spent some time with the various apps from Telegram and Signal.

Settling on one would probably take a bit of research, and that’s fine. But is switching to one of these a process I want to take on? Should I care about message security? Allo wasn’t really secure either, and I don’t think anyone would claim that RCS is. Even Facebook is out here saying that Messenger will soon be encrypted, something that I’m not sure Hangouts has ever considered. There are apps like Signal and Telegram that want you to feel secure as you have private conversations. You see, encryption is the new hotness in messaging. Where I bring this back to feeling trapped is when I talk about how I’m getting the urge from the industry to switch to something else, something non-Google. Google is reportedly working on advancing RCS on its own, but I have my doubts on that happening here in the US.īut that’s just what Google has going on. The problem there is that RCS is being held up by your carrier and the rollout is an absolutely frustrating disaster. Google would rather you use their Messages app with RCS, a more advanced version of SMS. Hangouts Chat might takeover for regular Hangouts next year on some level, though that’s not a guarantee. That focus led to Hangouts Chat and Meet in 2017, all while regular Hangouts suffered. It told us Hangouts wouldn’t die because of Allo, only to admit a couple of months later it wouldn’t see much support and would get a business focus instead. Google decided it wanted to compete with WhatsApp so it created and then killed Allo. Of course, that was six years ago and a whole bunch of stuff has happened since. With every mention of Hangouts in that first year, it became easier and easier to invest in it as the messaging platform for me and those I talked the most with.

#My google hangouts history full

It supported multiple accounts and worked on as many devices as you needed it to, with full syncing between them all.Īs Google turned its focus to Hangouts, they told us it was everything. Since almost all of us have Google accounts, finding friends or starting conversations was dead simple. It was an easy switch because Google let you jump into it with your Google account and made an app available to everyone out of the gate. When it was introduced in 2013 (!), I talked everyone into making the switch to it and they did. I’ve been so heavily invested in Hangouts that some of the group conversations have years’ worth of history. I’d say that 90% of my digital communication with friends and family happens through Google Hangouts. Instead, as the title suggests, I just want to talk about how I feel trapped by it even as there are more than a couple messaging services that should probably replace it on my phone. I’m not necessarily writing about its death, though, because we know it’ll live on in some form or another through Hangouts Chat or as the poorly supported and dated version we have now. The writing has been on the wall for Hangouts for longer than I can remember and yet here I am, writing a piece about it.