Google Plans to Merge Duo and Meet – Meet Original

Google Plans to Merge Duo and Meet. By now it is no longer a surprising matter that Google would be retiring a service or a product. Although Google does not flip the switch immediately and instead tries to make these transitions as smooth and non-disruptive as possible, they still often lead to quite a bit of confusion and apprehension, especially when the products get merged.

Google Plans to Merge Duo and Meet

It seems like google would be doing it once again, and this time around, it could eclipse the shutdown of Google Play Music because of the number of users that get affected: Google has announced that Duo and Meet would be  Merged.

Google Plans to Merge Duo and Meet

Google has promised that the unification of the two platforms would be a painless one and it would lead to a single video chat solution once and for all or at least till it launches it next major thing. Duo and meet can actually be Duo and meet could actually be a lot different, standing on opposite ends of the video chat spectrum as far as purpose is concerned.

One of the values of Google Duo is simplicity and direct calls, allowing its users to simply select a contact straight from their phone book and dial them, just like with a conventional voice call. It is no secret that Duo turns out to be Google’s answer to Apple FaceTime, hailed for its ease of use and its convenience.

The pandemic brought about the rise of the need for a different kind of virtual communication. Video meetings and conferences have become both trendy and necessary, and it is where Google Meet has shined and brightest. In addition to a bevy of features, Meet also has gotten deeply integrated into the majority of Google’s suite of services like Gmail, Calendar, and Assistant.

While its major purpose has been more on the business side of people’s lives, also it brought about a bit of confusion on which service to make use of to reach people, which is why Google has decided to consolidate Duo Meet so that you would have to decide.

Google Duo and Google Meet

To be clear, Google is not getting rid of Duo. While limited to 1:1 and small group calls, there has just been a lot of investment and tons of users to sunset the service. There would also always be a need for an instant video call that does not need you to send a meeting link, which is where the duo does really great. Instead, Google would be bringing the Meet features into Duo but, at the same time, retiring the Duo name.

In the weeks to come, Google would be dropping meet’s features in the Duo app to point that the app would become a merger of Duo and Meet. This means that the Duo app would be getting support for virtual background, be able to schedule meetings, and integrate it with other Google services. At the same time, the Duo app users would still be able to make direct 1:1 calls just like they use to. So, no functionality gets is lost. Their conversation history would still remain intact after the merger.

Meet Original

The only thing that would get lost is the Duo’s Name, which would go away in favor of Meet immediately after all the changes have been made, with the Duo App being renamed to “Meet” and the meet app getting renamed as “Meet original.”

After all, Meet still has the upper hand when it comes to both popularity and meaning, as far as branding is concerned. It actually might get a bit confusing when you start to consider the fact that the functional changes would be taking place in the mobile apps, with the web versions retaining their usage restrictions and limited features.

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