Google has been rumored for a long time Duo and Google Meet consolidation is really happening. Google officially confirmed the move on June 1, explaining in a blog post that the goal was to create a “single video communication service” and that the Duo brand would be gone in favor of a new use case. use Google Meet.
Although the Google Duo brand is dying, it seems that Duo codebase will work on the platform of the new Google Meet. Google says that “the existing video calling features from Duo are still here” and “in the coming weeks, we’ll be adding all of the Google Meet features to the Duo app, so users can easily Schedule a video meeting at a time that works for everyone, or continue using video calling to instantly connect with a person or group. Later this year, we’ll rename the Duo app to Google Meet , our only video communication service on Google, is freely available to everyone.”
This move comes after Google unify its communication groups part of Google Workspace VP and GM Javier Soltero (author of the Google blog post) in 2020. Google hasn’t made it clear which products are being merged, but it does. Candlestick which means Google Hangouts, Google Meet, Google Chat, Google Messages, Google Duo, and Google Voice will all live under one roof.
Here’s a quick recap of long history Google’s communication app: Google Duo launched in 2016 as a standalone video chat the app has a “companion” messaging app called “Google Allo”. Google has failed in its attempt buy WhatsApp two years before that (Facebook made a $22 billion acquisition instead), so it opened up its copier for Google Allo, a direct WhatsApp clone. It uses SMS based phone number recognition instead of Google account and it is limited to one device at a time, after non-Google way on which WhatsApp works.
Launching two communication apps at the same time may seem strange, but the idea is that Google could advertise Duo as a companion to WhatsApp as well as Allo. Typically, a company would be expected to include video chat capabilities in its new messaging app — like Hangouts or Facebook Messenger, or (eventually) WhatsApp. Maybe Google knew they couldn’t compete with the WhatsApp juggler in chat though, so a standalone video app was created, with a Whatsapp clone to go with it. WhatsApp users can stay on WhatsApp to chat, but they can add this Duo app to their arsenal.
WhatsApp didn’t have a video chat feature at the time, and Duo rushed to market (it launched before Allo) to beat WhatsApps’ upcoming video release. Both Allo and Duo launched first in India — WhatsApps’ strongest market — and Duo was built from the ground up to offer video chat over the slowest Internet connections. This strategy worked, and even though Allo died after two and a half years, Duo was able to live on. To my knowledge, Google has never shared statistics on active users, but Duo has become a a default Android app in 2016, so it has over 5 billion Play Store downloads, just like every other default Android app.
While Duo is all about Google’s WhatsApp envy, Google Meet is the expression of Launch jealous. Technically, Meet launched in 2017 as an enterprise video conferencing product from the G Suite team, but it’s been in a backlog for years. When the pandemic hit in 2020 and the use of Zoom exploded, Google Meet was drafted as Google’s answer.
