Google to Discontinue Gchat, Replace With Hangouts ⇥ nymag.com

Madison Malone Kircher, New York magazine:

Starting in June, Google is saying good-bye to one of its most beloved products, Gchat. Officially, the chat app’s name was Google Talk; Gchat was just what hip, personal-computer owners started calling it back in the day, but the name has persisted. While the functionality of Gchat isn’t really going away — users will be rolled over to Hangouts, a Google chat platform that has been up and running for four years at this point and does effectively the same thing — the name and user interface will be no more.

However will users cope with only the choice of using Allo, Duo, Android Messages, Hangouts, and Google Voice for their messaging and communication needs?

Update: Updated to correct the naming of Android Messages, which I had previously called “Google Messenger”, which is Gchat, which is what is being discontinued. In my defence, it’s really hard keeping track of all of these apps.