Google announced today that it is combining two of its video calling applications, Duo and Meet, into a single platform. Very soon, there will only be Google Meet, and Google expects it to be the only thing users of the app need for almost everything in their lives.
By bringing them both together, Google hopes to be able to solve some of the problems of modern communication tools. “What’s really been important is to understand how people decide which tool to use, for what purpose, and under what circumstances,” says Javier Soltero, head of Google Workspace. Our digital lives are full of a million different chat apps, each with its own rules and rules and contact list, some for business and some personal. Google hopes to be able to use Gmail addresses and phone numbers to put it all together. “It’s really important and powerful to be able to get to you that way,” says Soltero, “and then allow yourself to decide whether you want to get there or not, instead of having to deal with all these different identities and deal with them. to the consequences ”.
Soltero has been preaching this idea of ”accessibility” for most of his tenure at Google, and this has led Google to integrate Meet and Chat into many of its other services. It’s a good goal, but it has a cost: Adding it all has made some of Google’s services cluttered and complicated. You can start a meeting from anywhere! But … do you really want to? Streamlining your communication options is a good idea, but grouping everything at random doesn’t work.
In recent years, in particular, Meet has become a powerful platform for group meetings and chats of all kinds, while Duo has remained more of a messaging app. Google promises to bring all the features of Duo to Meet in the future and seems convinced that it can offer the best of both worlds.
However, it is not entirely correct to say that Duo is being murdered. The app, which Google originally launched in 2016 as an easy way to make individual video calls, does a number of useful things that Meet does not. On the one hand, you can call someone directly, including their phone number, instead of relying on sending links or pressing the giant Meet button on your Google Calendar invitation. Duo has always looked more like FaceTime than Zoom. (Google also launched an iMessage competitor, Allo, at the same time as Duo. Allo wasn’t that great.)
The new Google Meet home screen. Image: Google
As the two services become one, Google relies on the Duo mobile app as its default. Very soon, the Duo app will receive an update that includes a large number of Meet features on the platform; later this year, the Duo app will be renamed Google Meet. The current Meet app will be renamed “Meet Original” and will eventually become obsolete.
This sounds … confusing, but Google claims it’s the best way forward. “The Duo mobile app had a lot of sophistication, especially under the hood,” says Dave Citron, product manager for Google Video Products. “Especially in emerging markets, where network connectivity was poor or highly variable.” On the web, it’s different; Meet is the most developed web platform, so it is the basis of the new combined system. But in both cases, “the idea is 100% functionality,” Citron said, “combining strength and no user left behind.”
This is another effort by Google to unify some of its previously different parts, making Google’s suite of services more coherent and cohesive. Soltero said that as Meet has grown during the pandemic, it has become the obvious place for Google to focus its voice and video efforts in the future. And he hopes that over time, the Meet brand can come to mean more than “meeting.”
For this to work, Google has a lot of small things to do with messaging and calling
Doing so will be difficult for Google. If you want to build a cross-platform, multi-purpose platform for audio and video calling, you need to get it right. Should all the browsing devices and tabs you’ve logged in to ring every time you receive a call? (Google says no, and it’s getting better to recognize which device you’re using and send calls and notifications.) Should you be able to receive calls on your personal and work device at the same time? (There isn’t a good answer yet, but Soltero said he’s leading the charge to find out.)
Meet is already integrated into so many Google services that it could become a significant competitor to WhatsApp and FaceTime virtually overnight, but only if it can be integrated without being annoying or complicated.