In March of 2021, when Google still wouldn’t let everyone into Chat and left long-time Hangouts users on an aging, slowly-dying, and feature-stripped messaging platform, I decided it was time to move on. I’d love to sit here and tell you that it is a great app and that you should be using it, but I left the system long ago and never looked back. The replacement for Hangouts is Google Chat (not to be confused with RCS “Chat” within Google Messages), a capable messaging app that brought over our conversations from Hangouts, has a modern look and features, and should continue to be a big part of Google’s messaging path going forward. For many of us, that has meant deciding whether or not to use Google’s replacement or finding something else.

Of course, we know the story there and that Hangouts is now all-but-dead. My entire family (and most friends) had all bought into Google’s most important messaging app over the years because it was simple to use through a Google account and worked on all platforms. Leaving Google Hangouts for another messaging platform was a once-unimaginable idea.