Google makes Hangouts Chat widely available to G Suite users

Google pulled its business chat service Hangouts Chat out of beta a year after its announcement and is making it widely available to users of the G Suite platform. The chat app integrates with other G Suite apps.

Hangouts Chat was previously in the invitation-based G Suite Early Adopter Program, but this week Google is making the service available to all G Suite users. Google announced Chat along with Meet last year, as a business spin-off of its Hangouts service. Chat is for team messaging, while Meet is for video conferencing.

With Chat, Google competes with Slack and Microsoft Teams, among others. Hangouts Chat includes support for bots and works closely with Google Drive, Calendar, and Hangouts Meet. In addition, integration of third-party apps is possible, including Box.

Availability coincides with some other changes to G Suite. For example, the calendar service Calendar is better able to suggest available meeting rooms thanks to the use of artificial intelligence. Docs has support for Quick Access, which allows G Suite to push forward documents and other files that may be relevant to the document the user is working on.

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