Google has been heavily criticized in tech blogs for two things in recent years: the “Google kills X” meme, and the company’s apparent obsession with messaging services. If Google is not killing a service that customers love like Google Reader, or Inbox or Play Music, then it’s finding a new way to add a messaging system to Google Maps or Google Photos or build yet another brand new one. It’s partly a joke, but unfortunately far too serious, because Google actually does these things. Or so it used to be. Something about the recent announcement that Google Meet and Duo are merging strikes me as different, and maybe the company is starting to see the big picture and start solving these issues.
These are not quite tinfoil hat levels of conspiracy, but they are something I have discussed in muted tones with my colleagues at Android Police because this is various. Google has announced that the long-rumored merger between its two video calling platforms will take place later this year, but one is not just eating the other. Although the Duo is losing its branding as part of the change, Google is not leaving it behind. The duo mobile app takes over from the newly merged Meet, though Meet retains its online presence and Google promises feature parity before the end. People are already joking about how complicated the merger between Google Meet and Duo seems to be, as it’s not just one service that actually eats the other, but it’s exactly as simple as I’ve just described: Google Meet anywhere except on the mobile where it will be Meet through the Duo app (and the reason for to is also clear).
I can not think of another project merger / death at Google that can be summed up so gracefully.
I can not think of another project merger / death at Google that can be summed up so gracefully. Part of it certainly comes down to Google explaining things so succinctly, but the biggest part is simply that it is so concise.
Think of the “merger” between Google Chat (not that Chat) and Hangouts. Hangouts itself was the victim of an internal breach that eventually created Google Meet, and the text-based dirt disappeared while Google was obsessed with the ultimately doomed Allo. Features were slowly killed (SMS support was removed, Google Voice integration left behind, Google Fi customers were pushed to the Messages app), and finally, the Hangouts Chat project spun from its overdue corpse was chosen as its replacement. At the time when Google decided that Chat was the future, feature parity was not an issue – Hangouts were so simple that there was nothing left for a new service to add. Actual comparison of features between Hangouts and Google Chat heavy favors Chat. But the old Hangouts app is still working in this vast year 2022, just like the Hangouts website.
Hangout’s death has been loud, confusing and protracted, while the changes to Duo and Meet are pretty obvious before things even begin. It could be a more messy process than we expect, but it really does not sound like it.
Hangout’s death has been loud, confusing and protracted, while the changes to Duo and Meet are pretty obvious before things even begin.
Then there is the case of Gmail and the death of Inbox. Google promised that Inbox’s bundles would come to Gmail, a guarantee that will remain unfulfilled almost half a decade later. When providing feature parity means doing actual work, Google is slow to do so, if at all, as those who switched from Google Play Music to YouTube Music can tell you. The closest thing to a real “fusion” in spirit, I think we’ve seen for Google apps and services, may be the Google Pay / Android Pay / Tez Union, which started with a single branding across different payment verticals and – markets, but eventually spread to a single app (and soon a return of Google Wallet branding). But even the merger that I would argue was a success was a more messy and apparently more organic process than Duo / Meet.
I’m sure there are other examples where Google has brought things together more successfully and cleanly, but they are the exception rather than the rule. Even the examples above are a bit unusual; often Google ignores or even kills one thing to make room for another. Customers moan and grit their teeth as ages go between updates or another tombstone being erected in Google Graveyard, but the company doesn’t care. And worse, there is no one there to worry when engineers and project managers get involved in new roles. Google’s broken toys are simply left on the ground until someone decides to turn off URLs and apps.
That’s Google’s reputation, and today it’s feeling different. The duo has not been abandoned; it got a new Material You-themed update last year, and it still receives a constant stream of updates. Meet has not been ignored either, and picks up new small features every few weeks. Google certainly does not ignore one of these in favor of the other. Nor does Google just kill one to make room. Bits of Duo will continue as Meet moves into its app, and Meet will continue on other platforms and in branding. Google even showed some UI tweaks we can expect. It did not look like Meet or Duo, but a union of the two – a “fusion”, if you will.
Meets expected unified user interface.
Based on everything we know now, we are not giving up anything through this change. This is exactly what customers have requested, it makes it easier to use the two services by not having an arbitrary and indistinct line drawn somewhere due to the number of participants in the call, and each “page” gets something as part of the transaction.
Now there are other reasons that Google may have to push for this merger to happen as it is. Probably the most important reason to not just give up Duo and move everything over to Meet (as Google did with Hangouts and Google Chat) is apps. Duo is a core GMS package and that means it comes pre-installed on most Android phones. That’s why it has over five billion installations in the Play Store, and it’s an advantage that Google simply can not give up by obsolete it. Although the focus here seems to be on preserving Meet, the Google Duo app retains and abandons its Meet equivalent.
Of course, the focus on Google Meet may have to do with revenue generation through Google Workspace subscriptions, but it’s neither here nor there. However, it touches on another important reason why Google would fold Duo along with Google Meet, and that is the fact that the company reorganized all its messaging efforts in 2020 into a single team under the Vice President behind Google Workspace. Meet is part of Google Workspace (formerly G Suite), and Duo is not. The operation since then has been to further unify Google’s disparate efforts, both in terms of service consolidation and in terms of platform integrations. Hangouts for Chat Migration was a comparative mess – a 2020 interview with The Verge acknowledged it – and it all started, at least in part, before these organizational changes.
This merger is the first fruit we have seen from Google’s new unified messaging team, and by virtue of its relative simplicity, it feels like a more responsible decision being made. There is no years of clutter and confusion about when things will change and how, and I doubt we will worry about what apps we will need for what in a few years. Google has made it clear that Duo’s integrations will work as they did before during Meet, so video calls via your dialer app should be about the same. Yes, the old Meet app will be phased out over time, but that’s the only change we really need to address – Meet was already forced into the Gmail app, and it is probably how most people were already used to using it. The details of other platforms are not clear yet, but if you were among the few people who used Duo online, you might have suffered the unworthiness of a redirect, and I doubt Assistant-connected smart screens will work differently than customers at all after the change.
There is already a sense of continuity in these coming changes, as I do still do not feel when I think back on things like YouTube Music
All this extra consideration and work for a simple transition reflects a deeper and more mature view on the part of Google. Nothing is killed or ignored and functions are not left. There is already a sense of continuity in these coming changes, as I do still do not feel when I think back on things like YouTube Music. No one wipes the board clean in a misguided attempt to start over or give up the old and smashed for the new hot. It’s just a deliberate and deliberate attempt to bring together two very clearly related video calling services under a single umbrella, combating both our image of Google as a business that only kills things and Google as a business that is obsessed with new messaging services.
With a small but interesting merger, Google is making a concerted effort to contradict both of its customers’ biggest criticisms. While I may be reading too much into this, I think this may be the first sign that Google is actually aware of the damage to reputation it has done, and is making an effort to do better, by building things together as it grows forward, instead of lazily throwing them away as it whizzes from idea to idea.
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