Google strips location sharing from Google Hangouts

Enlarge (credit: Google)

Google is stripping away a key feature from its best and most popular messaging platform. Google Hangouts users are no longer able to share their locations with one another.

It's not clear why Google is suddenly stripping away features from Google Hangouts, but an update to the Hangouts Android app, version 32, removes the location button from the text input area. Previously, the button would do a one-time ping of the user's location, mark it on Google Maps, and send a link and in-line map to the chat window. In the past, this worked on Android and iOS, though at some point it was removed from the iOS version. Hangouts users will have to switch to real-time location sharing through Google Maps.

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