google: Gmail rolling out new status bar icons for Google Chat, Spaces for Android – Times of India

As the classic Hangouts is ready to go away for Workspace customers, Google is pushing out more updates for its Chats and Spaces, adding more capabilities to them. The company has now rolled out an update for Gmail users on Android that brings new status bar icons, which help users to identify whether the message has come on Chats or Spaces.
For users, who don’t know the difference, previously the messages that came on Chat (which is one-to-one conversations) and Spaces (which is like Slack or any work platform), were the same. However, with the new update, the display icons for both will be a little different.
How are Chat and Spaces icons different?
For Chat: A user will see one message bubble behind the other
For Spaces: The message looks like three humans standing next to each other.
According to a report by news website 9to5Google, the company is now using the bottom status bar icons, which till now, helped users to distinguish between the conversations.
The report added that if there are any complaints from the users, that is they might miss the hollowed-out Chat icon due to its design. However, people will take a little time to get accustomed to the Spaces icon since it gives out a social media-like feeling.
At present, these are the only new updates, which are visibly different and they have not yet been widely rolled out.
Google will shut down Hangouts soon
Google had earlier set the date for migration away from Classic Hangouts to Google Chats in March for Workspace (previously G Suite) users. Google was supposed to start the migration from October 2019 but the multi-stage plan did not begin until 2020.
On its blog, Google said: “We’re now ready to move into the final phase of the migration from Classic Hangouts to Google Chat for Google Workspace customers.”