Google at present has two apps for video and audio calls, Meet and Duo, however quickly the corporate will mix them into a brand new Google Meet software.
Google confirmed right now that its two apps for video and audio calls, Meet and Duo, shall be merged right into a single service. Though the brand new mixed app will maintain the Google Meet identify, the cellular apps shall be an replace to the present Duo app — the present Meet app will finally be renamed to ‘Meet Authentic’ after which discontinued. Dialog historical past, contacts, and messages shall be retained all through the transition.
“Within the coming weeks,” Google mentioned in a weblog publish, “we’re including all of the Google Meet options to the Duo app, so customers can simply schedule a video assembly at a time that works for everybody, or proceed utilizing video calling to immediately join with an individual or group. Later this 12 months, we’ll rename the Duo app to Google Meet, our single video communications service throughout Google that’s accessible to everybody at no-cost.”
Google used to have a single video and audio service for each enterprise clients and common folks, generally known as Google Hangouts. Nevertheless, the corporate launched two new apps in 2016 that aimed to exchange Hangouts for normal folks: Allo (for textual content messaging) and Duo (for calls). Hangouts was promptly break up into two new products aimed at organizations, known as Hangouts Chat (much like Slack or Microsoft Groups) and Hangouts Meet (for calls). In 2018, Google started shutting down Allo and began shifting its options to Messages (the default SMS app on Android), whereas Hangouts remained an enterprise product.
The COVID-19 pandemic, and the recognition round Zoom, brought on the road between Google Meet and Duo to blur. Google opened up Meet to anyone with a Google account, as an alternative of limiting it to paying clients, whereas Duo steadily increased the maximum number of participants who could possibly be on the identical video name.
With a lot overlap between Duo and Meet, it is smart that the 2 providers are merging. That doesn’t make the method any much less complicated, although, particularly as Google remains to be flip-flopping on the right way to deal with its messaging providers. Six years after Hangouts was break up into a number of providers, we’re again to a single app. “All of this has happened before, but the question remains, does all of this have to happen again?”
Supply: Google