Google will end Hangouts On Air live streaming service later this year

Google is pulling the plug on Hangouts On Air. The part of the chat service that allowed video chats to be invented publicly will be discontinued as part of the Hangouts phase-out.

Users who start a video stream through Hangouts On Air will be notified that the service will no longer be available “later this year”. When exactly that will be is not entirely clear.

Hangouts On Air was initially a feature in Google+ that was later incorporated into YouTube. The feature allows users to livestream a video chat with multiple users to YouTube. Google redirects users to youtube.com/webcam to use a similar feature. Google plans to stop Hangouts altogether next year and focus entirely on its other chat apps, Duo and Allo.