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Earlier this week, it was rumored that Google would be doing away with a pretty major feature inside of their popular chat app known as Hangouts, as they’re seemingly preparing an update to release in the future that removes the capability to send and receive SMS and MMS messages, meaning users would no longer be able to use Hangouts as their default SMS app. According to the same details, Google is currently dogfooding a new app update internally which also prompts user to give Messenger a try, perhaps to prepare the users for the inevitable switch. After users had been begging for SMS integration for quite some time, it seems a bit odd that Google would decide to remove something that was not only sought after for a while but popular once it arrived.
Chances are though that Messenger is a lot of the reason, as it too is a Google app which provides a default SMS service to the user, and in the opinion of many users, its experience is superior to that of the one offered by Hangouts. Google is always about providing the best possible product for their users, so it stands to reason that if Messenger provides a better experience for a feature that is also in Hangouts, Google might simply decide to split SMS functionality off from Hangouts, let Messenger continue to offer it, and focus on making Hangouts an excellent chat app for Hangouts conversations as well as voice and video calls. Whether or not Google actually decides to remove SMS/MMS features from the app is still unconfirmed, but it seems likely. Are you hoping Google decides keep offering the option of having Hangouts be your default SMS app?
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