Google’s Gtalk messenger has been around for many years and is still one of the most loved IM tools on the market, alas it won’t be sticking around much longer. The old and outdated service will soon hit a dead end and by that we mean at the start of next week as the search giant is finally pulling the plug.
Come February 16, Google will completely shut down Gtalk and you’ll be forced to switch over to Hangouts. This move doesn’t come as a surprise especially when the company has been working hard to improve the latter which is now considered its main messaging platform on Android, Chrome OS and Google+.
Gizmodo India is reporting that the service will entirely be replaced by the Hangouts application on Windows. Sadly, there isn’t going to be a desktop tool like with Gtalk and you’ll have to rely on a web application which only works on Chrome if you wish to stay connected with your Google contacts on Windows.
Also read: Indian users can now make international voice calls using Google Hangouts
Hangouts isn’t the most popular IM service out there and like Google+, the company has been doing its best to make it all the more appealing. With the latest version of Android, you can implement it as the default messaging application and the service allows you to do a lot like make calls, video conference with contacts and send multimedia messages amongst others.
The Chrome version will also offer all of same features and through an improved UI which is visible in the screenshot above. And what’s interesting is that the web application will continue to run even if you decide to close the browser.
Head over to this link if you wish to ditch Gtalk and upgrade to Hangouts on the web.