Google Hangouts API will close in April

Google has announced that Hangouts API will close next April, specifically on the 25th of that month. Google states in the same statement that the decision has been taken "in the process of keeping our services more agile" and that, likewise, the application will focus "on the business segment."

Does this mean the death of Hangouts? Not at all, for now. Simply, programmers who used this API to develop their applications will no longer be able to use it, and in fact all those applications (with few exceptions) will stop working as of April 25, once the Google Hangouts API is withdrawn.

The famous app is not going to disappear for now, although this is a severe blow to its continuity. For now, Google will try to focus on Hangout to the business environment, so that it becomes the benchmark app when making video calls between workers. In fact, Google has announced the purchase of LimesAudio to acquire a technology with which to improve the sound and video calling experience in Hangouts, from which it can be deduced that they do not want to bury this app yet.

But at a particular level, the battle within Google has already been won the new messaging apps snapshots that emerged throughout 2016: Allo and Duo. The first blow was settled when Google announced that these apps would come pre-installed on Android smartphones, thus replacing Hangouts and occupying its space. The acceptance of these apps and the download figures have done the rest.

As it is, Duo (for video calls) and Allo (for text messages) rise as the new and priori definitive bet of Google to conquer a market where other apps have won the game. With Hangouts they couldn't, so we'll see how they do with these.