Google’s video chat merger begins: now there are two “Google Meet” apps

Google is officially launching the merger of its two video chat apps, Google Meet and Google Duo. Google announced the merger in June, with plans to retain the Google Meet brand name while merging the best of both codebases into the Google Duo app. According to Google’s PR email (no links, sorry), people will see Duo’s app and website branding transition to Google Meet this week. Google’s various rebrands are all in a rollout, so they’ll arrive at different times for different people, but Google says the full rebrand should be complete for everyone by September.

Therefore, Google Duo will be renamed to Google Meet and the existing Google Meet app will remain for a while. That means it’s there now two Apps called “Google Meet”. Google has a help article describing this extremely confusing situation, naming the two Meet apps “Google Meet (Original): The Updated Meet App” and “Google Meet: The Updated Duo App.” The Google Meet (Original) app will one day be put to pasture; It just stays put while Google rebuilds the meetings functionality on top of Google Duo. Did everyone comply?

The video services Meet and Duo were both developed in response to far more stable communications competition from Google. Google Meet was technically developed in 2017 as a video chat application for group companies called “Google Hangouts Meet,” but it really grew into a major project after Zoom’s growth exploded in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Google Meet was still locked behind a paywall in the early months of the work-from-home era, and while it eventually became as easy to use as Zoom, it was after Zoom became a household name.

Google Duo was released in 2016 along with the “companion app” Google Allo in response to the growth of WhatsApp. Google and Facebook got caught in a $22 billion bidding war for WhatsApp two years earlier. Google lost and spent the next two years creating a WhatsApp clone called Google Allo. Instead of integrating video chat into the app, Google has split video functionality into a separate app called Google Duo. WhatsApp didn’t have video chat at the time, so you could use Google Duo video chat with Facebook’s WhatsApp or Google’s Allo if you wanted.

Allo and Duo originally focused on India, which led Duo to build a one-to-one video chat system that was low on bandwidth and worked well on unstable connections. This efficient video chat system will be the basis for the new combined app, with Google building Meet’s meeting link feature into Duo and renaming it. The install base probably also plays a role here. As the default Android app, Google Duo has more than 5 billion downloads on the Play Store, while Meet only has 100 million. Google’s path ensures a smoother transition for those 5 billion installs, while the 100 million must be switched over manually. Google says it will hide the old, original Google Meet app from App Store searches in September. Finally, a popup message needs to be implemented for existing users of the old Google Meet app, prompting them to upgrade.

This move comes as Google “unified” its messaging teams in 2020, with a single person, Google Workspace VP and GM Javier Soltero, taking the reins of “all of Google’s collective communications products.” That should mean Google Hangouts, Google Meet, Google Chat, Google Messages, Google Duo, and Google Voice, and Google even built in the Android phone app to good measure. However, last month it was announced that Soltero was leaving Google, so it’s only been two years for the messaging coalition. No one knows who, if anyone, will take over as the new “messaging boss.” However, Soltero’s plan is still going ahead — aside from this merger of Meet and Duo, Hangouts will be shutting down for good in a couple of months. This new, more cohesive lineup will leave one Google video app and three Google chat apps.