Google has announced that it is preparing the merger of its two video call services: Meet and Duo. The former is one of the two apps that made up the late Hangouts, the other being Google Chat, while the latter is a video chat app.
The merger of Meet and Duo is not nonsense if we take into account that both have similarities and neither of them has truly become widespread among users. The search giant has made his intentions clear in an entry published with the following title: “Bringing Google Meet features to Google Duo for a single integrated video solution”.
Google has recalled the cross-platform nature of Duo and the fact that it has some 32 million users, while Meet has introduced more than 100 features and improvements since its launch in 2020.
The corporation has explained that in the coming weeks will add “all Google Meet features to the Duo app so users can easily schedule a video meeting at a time that works for everyone or continue to use video calls to instantly connect with one person or group”. Later, although probably this year, Google Duo will be renamed Google Meet, thus materializing the merger to have a single video call service.
Being more specific, these are the features that Duo will receive in the near future to end up becoming Google Meet:
- Schedule meetings so everyone can join at a time that works best for you.
- A meetup chat with deeper engagement.
- Share live content to enable interaction with all call participants.
- Real-time captions to improve accessibility and increase engagement.
- Increase the number of participants in a video call from 32 to 100.
- Integration with other tools like Gmail, Google Calendar, Assistant, Messages and more.
To all this would be added the possibilities of managing the characteristics, resources and access to a video call, in addition to educational functions for users older or younger than 18 years.
Due to the changes that will be introduced, in the near future there will only be Google Meet, which will have a web version and mobile applications. The company has not given exact dates on the transition and subsequent discontinuation of Google Duo, but seeing the blog post, the process could be at least very advanced by the end of 2022.
