Starting in the first half of 2021, everyone can begin upgrading from Hangouts to Chat. In addition, Chat features the same strong phishing protections we built in Gmail, so if a link is sent to you via Chat, it will be checked against real-time data from Safe Browsing and flagged if it’s found to be malicious. With Chat, you can more easily plan with others on goals and similar interests, share and collaborate on files, and assign tasks to help keep everyone on the same page. Chat includes familiar Hangouts features like direct and group messaging, with helpful additions like send to inbox, faster search, emoji reactions and suggested replies. Next year, Chat will become available as a free service-both in the integrated experience in Gmail and the Chat standalone app.

Google Chat for everyone coming next year