Google has discontinued one of its key service offerings for businesses. Effective today, it has stopped the Google Business profile chat feature.
Google has been growing its inventory of abandoned products and services, which are either no longer used or profitable to the company. In its latest addition to the inventory, The tech giant has pulled the plug on Google's Business Profile chat feature, which was one of the key portals for customers to connect with businesses.
The service known mostly as Google Business Messaging, and less frequently called the Google Business Profile Chat, allowed customers to initiate conversations with businesses regarding their products or services. This feature helped customers not only connect with key businesses but also helped them increase their conversion rates through conversational inquiry resolution.
The Google Business Messaging feature was integrated across prominent Google services like Google Maps and search listings, among others. Businesses that were actively utilizing the Business Messaging feature have been notified by the company regarding the discontinuation of its product.
Google has placed great emphasis on its commitment to provide valuable tools for businesses over the email sent to its global user base. The company also acknowledged the inconvenience this disruption may have caused to the businesses relying on it for revenues. It claimed that the discontinuation of the Google Business Messaging feature was inevitable considering its efforts to optimize and refine its offerings.
From July 15 2024 onwards, customers will no longer be able to initiate new conversations with businesses. The ongoing conversations will remain active till they are closed from either end of the parties. Users will also be notified about the discontinuation to help them export any important documents or data for future reference. Post discontinuation, no record of the chats or their data will be available to users without special permissions.
From July 31 2024 onwards, Google will permanently remove the chat functionality and call history from all Google Business profiles.
The company has encouraged all businesses to export their chat and call history before the July 31st deadline. Businesses can retrieve this data through Google Takeout, a simple tool that allows extracting data from any of the Google products. While the function is gone, advertising business on Google Maps is still possible allowing two-way communication between businesses and customers.
