Starting in December, smartphone manufacturers will no longer be required to install Hangouts on their handsets. Instead, phone makers will need to provide users with the recently-launched Duo. This is not to say that Hangouts is being killed off -- not yet, at least. But Duo, complete with end-to-end encryption, will replace the app as part of the core Google Mobile Services package. The announcement came in an email from Google to developers which says: "Today, we are announcing that Google Duo will replace Hangouts within the suite of core GMS apps, and Hangouts will become GMS Optional for telephony… [Continue Reading]