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Migration of Currents Communities to Google Chat Spaces is in progress



Migration of Currents Communities to Google Chat Spaces is entering its final phase.

When Google+ for personal accounts shut down in 2019, it remained open for G Suite (now Google Workspace) users. It was simplified and rebranded Currents.

Over time it became pretty clear that Currents was not getting much love from Google, and when the new Google Workspace was launched as a “better home for work” in October 2020, Currents didn’t even get a mention.

So it was no surprise when Google announced last year that Currents would be shut down and (at least some) Communities would be migrated to Google Chat Spaces.

Note that the migration will only include Communities and Community Members active after July 2020. That means this does not include any personal Google accounts.

  • December 31, 2022: This was the deadline to opt in to the migration. Organizations that did not opt in will not have their Currents Communities migrated.
  • March 31: Creation of new Communities in Currents was disabled. This was also the deadline to resolve shared ownership communities (a Chat Space cannot have Space Managers from different Google Workspace domains). 
  • April - June: Migration of data from Currents to Spaces. Google Workspace admins should have the actual date for their organization. 
  • July 5: Currents shuts down. Data is still available for export in Google Takeout.
  • August 8: Deletion of Currents data, including the activity log and admin console reports. 
Once the migration begins, access to Currents is disabled. 

For Communities with members outside the owner’s Google Workspace organization, those outside members will be added as “guests”.

Google has a detailed overview of what content will and won’t be migrated here. Note that only posts from Communities will be migrated to Spaces. 

Currently Spaces do not have the same features as Currents Communities. Some of the limitations:
  • A Space can only have Space Managers from a single Google Workspace organization
  • Maximum 50,000 Space members
  • Posts with comments are converted to Inline threads, but only 200 responses will be migrated
  • No community moderators (but Space Managers can be appointed after migration)
  • No content filters or ability to hold posts for review
  • No draft posts
  • No equivalent to resharing posts, so reshared posts are not migrated
  • Images larger than 200 MB and videos are not migrated
In preparation for the migration Google has been rolling out new Chat features, including inline threading (which is sort-of like posts with comments), custom emojis (Google Workspace only), and the ability to discover Spaces by searching in Gmail.

This week Google added new Space features and published a timeline of new features that will be available "soon".
  • There is a new option rolling out now to create an Announcements-only Space, where posting is limited to Space Managers. Note that you must have a Google Workspace account to create an Announcements Space.
  • Coming soon: Post view metrics
  • Coming soon: Full Chat API
  • Coming soon: Google Groups sync with Spaces for membership management
  • Coming soon: Space management tools in the Google Workspace admin console
Once the migration is complete, will Google eventually implement public Spaces, like the old public Google+ Communities? I'm skeptical, but stranger things have happened.

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