January will mark the final point in the painfully elongated death of Google Hangouts. Chat, according to many users, felt like a 'downgrade' from Hangouts.įollowing much turmoil, Google continued to migrate users over to Chat in a 'phased migration,' which has now been ongoing for over two years. Even though Hangouts was never really as popular as some other messaging apps such as WhatsApp, it had a sufficient user base. Users were not pleased when the company first started transitioning them over to Google Chat. Google has had a long, rocky road with its Hangouts closure. Understanding the Google Hangouts to Chat transition Don't worry about it, though, Google will notify you via email whenever your Hangouts data is prepped up and ready to be downloaded, so you won't miss a thing. Depending on the size of your data, the amount of time taken by this step greatly varies across users. Once you have selected everything and started the process, Google will compile all your Hangouts data and send it to your preferred save destination. As for the save location, Google offers to email you a download link when it's ready or transfer the data to one of four cloud storage platforms: Google Drive, Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, and Box.

tgz formats, and any file larger than 2GB is automatically split into multiple files. You can only export a copy of your Google Hangouts data in. (Image credit: Namerah Saud Fatmi / Android Central)

Google hangouts download chat log