This is weird to hear, to me hangouts was always the new thing that ousted gchat.
> google chat [...] would be available in consumer space
I can't imagine they're bringing back the old old thing, are they?
The Wikipedia disambiguation page really clears up the mess that is Google's branding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chat
> Google Talk, also known as Google Chat,[1] was an instant messaging service that provided both text and voice communication.[2] The instant messaging service was variously referred to colloquially as Gchat, Gtalk, or Gmessage among its users.[3]
What a mess.
Are they too scared of regulators to make an iMessage-like service in Android? RCS will barely nibble at the ground they need to cover in order to compete for real.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/9/21215588/google-chat-hango...
It is effectively a slack or teams competitor.
Classic Hangouts is/was a lot of things. Sadly it was too many things. The new Chat has very similar Gmail integration, so if they ever get it out to consumer, it hopefully won't be a big change for people.
Specifically, where do the private keys reside?
My understanding is Google has said externally that they plan on killing the classic Hangouts product. So that means Google chat and Google Meet would be available in consumer space for people with @gmail.com addresses. but right now the focus of those two products is on gSuite.
I'd also definitely agree with what other people are saying, duo is the FaceTime competitor. It has direct integration into the Google dialer in the Google SMS app. It's also rather brain dead simple to use.