This is the end of an era. This is the end of GTalk. Google promised that this day would come back in March. Starting Monday, Google has discontinued the GTalk service and has required of its users to switch to Hangouts.
GoogleTalk came into existence back in 2005 and is one of Google’s oldest communication services. It started out as a chat assistant for Gmail and has been a favorite for many users ever since. The interface is quite simple and minimalistic. Google launched another service in 2013 by the name Hangouts which has features like GIF support. All contacts are automatically transferred from Google Talk and the feature to chat with Gmail contacts is available in Hangouts, making it a perfect replacement for the users who used the Google Talk service.
It has been reported that the Android application for Google Talk would be phased out of use and the users are requested to install the Hangouts application instead. The interface is different from the Google Talk, although just very slightly. Hangouts is way more advanced than Google Talk, offering services like a group video chat and integration with other Google services. Google announced in March that it is dropping the support for carrier SMS on Hangouts and has been trying to integrate Hangouts with Gmail for quite some time, trying to make Hangouts a default for chatting with Gmail contacts and using Android Messages for carrier SMS.
Google also launched services like Allo and Duo to make chatting using Google services more efficient and interactive integrating Google’s Assistant with Allo. Google mentioned in a blog post that unless there are contractual commitments, starting June 26, all users would automatically be transferred from Google Talk to Hangouts and for the users that prefer the interface of Google Talk, there would be an option ‘Dense Roster’ that would allow Hangouts to provide a similar experience as Google Talk.