It was a couple of years ago that Google Hangouts was rebooted and rebranded into Hangouts Meet and Hangouts Chat, two apps to help teams communicate. Now the Hangouts apps are going through another rebrand.
Google this week published a blog post detailing the security features that "Google Meet" has to help keep you video calls secure. The app is referred to by name several times, and each time there's no "Hangouts" present, just "Google Meet", leading some to speculate that Google was renaming its video calling service.
Today Google confirmed that that's the case, telling Android Police that the Hangouts Meet name is being retired and that the service will now be known as Google Meet. The rebranding is rolling out, and so it may take a little time for every reference to Hangouts Meet to become Google Meet.
The name change makes sense for Google. The name "Google" is much more recognizable to most folks than "Hangouts", and so folks who just see the name "Google Meet" will now instantly know that it's a Google product. And with many more people relying on video calling services now that they're working from home to fight the spread of the coronavirus, Google would probably like its own video calling product to stand out as much as possible.
Hangouts Chat is still carrying the "Hangouts" branding for now, and Google had no comment when asked if it would undergo a rebranding of its own.