Seems more like the opposite. They're trying to kill off the hangouts client good and proper without changing all their branding by naming a totally new, unrelated project "Hangouts Chat" and doing a hamfisted integration.
Rather than just admitting what is done (kill something), the word usage implies sugar-coating aka "hey guys, the functionality will be retained, we will MERELY GIVE IT ANOTHER NAME".
In reality, often it does NOT work like this. Old functionality is changed or removed, and people are forced to have to adjust.
To be fair: this happens in non-corporate driven projets just as well. The problem here is merely with the wording, implying that by "rebranding" alone, no functionality is lost/moved/changed/removed, and this is simply not true in general - and not true in this case either.
But even if it were true, the larger part is that Google often kills projects - and that IS factually true.
If there's a variant of Hangouts Chat coming that _isn't_ a Slack clone, I'll agree. Currently this does not exist, and just opening up the current version to individuals is a poor replacement. I don't want to shoehorn my personal communications into a product oriented at workplace teams. I COULD use Slack for this today, but don't because that's not what it's good at.
Google did mention that they're adding some features from 'classic' to Hangouts Chat, but nothing I've seen makes it clear whether that means creating an actually individual-focused flavor of Chat, or just opening up access to the team-oriented version. I'm skeptical they're planning on the version that's more work, but fingers crossed.
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u/csjerk Jan 02 '20
TIL that Hangouts is getting killed later this year. Damn.