Google recently announced that in early 2021 it will be sunsetting Google Hangouts, a service that enables users to place video and phone calls and send text messages. But unlike its decision to rescind its free unlimited storage space for photos, all of the features of Google Hangouts are and will continue to be available elsewhere.
Video calls are currently available in Google Meet and are free to all Google account holders. While the normal time limit for video calls is 60 minutes, Google has extended the time limit to a whopping 24 hours per video call to help people connect during the pandemic and has extended this promotion through March 31, 2021.
Phone calls and text messages are already available in Google Voice which is also free to all Google account holders.
Additionally, text messaging is currently available through Google Chat which is available through a paid G Suite account.
G Suite has recently been rebranded as Google Workspace and includes Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Chat, Meet and other features that are geared toward business customers. Starting next year, Chat will become a free service and will be integrated into Gmail and also available as a standalone app.
Confused? You’re not alone. To summarize options for that come with a free Google account, you can use Google Meet for video calls and Google Voice for phone calls right now. For text messages, you can use Google Hangouts until sometime in early 2021 and then transition to Google Chat when available or the chat function in Gmail when available. So there you have it—with all those options, now you have no excuse for not communicating with friends and family!
No comments:
Post a Comment