Google brings its Slack competitor out of beta

Google Hangouts ChatJust shy of a year after introducing its revamped Hangouts, which split the communication platform into Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet, Google is making Hangouts Chat available as a core G Suite service.

When Google introduced the new-look Hangouts, it made Meet available to all G Suite customers, but Chat was only available to customers through the early adopter program. Now, that has all changed.

Chats, which is a direct competitor to Slack, is built to help workplace teams collaborate with each other. It focuses on messaging between teams, with virtual rooms featuring threaded conversations, and has been to work with G Suite apps such as Docs, Sheets, and Slides. Furthermore, it uses artificial intelligence to speed up workflows.

The collaboration app supports 28 languages and each room can hold up to 8,000 members. It also comes with 25 bots from companies including Salesforce, Kayak, Trello, and Google’s own Drive and Meet.

Hangouts Chat available for Android and iOS on mobile devices, and for Windows and MacOS on desktop.