To be clear, Google isn’t axing Duo. While limited to 1:1 and small group calls, there has just been too much investment and too many users to sunset the service. There will also always be a need for an instant video call that doesn’t require sending a meeting link, which is where Duo excels. Instead, Google will be bringing Meet features into Duo but, at the same time, retiring the Duo name.
In the coming weeks, Google will bring all of Meet’s features into the Duo app to the point that the app will become a merger of Duo and Meet. This means that the Duo app will get support for virtual backgrounds, be able to schedule meetings, and integrate with other Google services. At the same time, however, Duo app users will still be able to make direct 1:1 calls like before, so no functionality is really lost. They won’t even lose their conversation history and contacts, so it looks like Duo is getting a Meet-sized upgrade for all intents and purposes.
What will be lost is Duo’s name, which will go away in favor of Meet once the changes have all been made, with the Duo app being renamed to “Meet” and the Meet app renamed to “Meet Original.” After all, Meet has had the advantage in both popularity and meaning, as far as branding is concerned. It might get a little bit confusing when you start to consider that the functional changes will happen only in the mobile apps, with the web versions retaining their limited features and usage restrictions. Either way, Meet has won the battle to become the One Connected Solution to rule them all, at least as far as video calls go — though there is still Google Chat, so that isn’t completely true, for now.
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