Nostalgic Google Talk to shut down and be replaced with Hangouts

The archaic Google Talk, which most of us start chatting with after opening our first Gmail accounts, is going to retire soon. The company plans to replace the messenger popularly known as 'Gchat' with Hangouts.

Post June 26 users who have not updated their Gmail suites to include Hangouts, will be automatically forced to opt out of Google Talk and switch to Hangouts. The Google Talk app will also be discontinued.

While it's not a major change for most, it is curtains drawn on the nostalgic messenger that has been around since the early 2000s, a time when desktop messengers ruled. But with smartphones taking a significant chunk of internet usage, companies have had to reinvent their products to suit the changing needs.

Google in fact has quite a few chat apps now so much so that it's confusing what it wants to establish. While Hangouts is still the predominant messenger used, Google Duo and Allo were also introduced last year. While Duo aims users who frequently use video or audio chat, Allo has been promoted as a new age smart messenger with in-built Google Assistant for users help.

Google also announced that it would replace SMS on Android devices with Android messages.

"We want to provide a consistent and easy-to-use SMS experience for Android users, right out of the box. So we're focused on making Android Messages the primary place to access SMS and are working with carriers and device manufacturers to include Android Messages natively in Android devices," said the company in its official blog.