Google Duo, a simple 1-to-1 video calling app

https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2016/08/meet-google-duo-simple-1-to-1-video.html?m=1

by thm • 10 years ago

311 364 10 years ago

googleblog.blogspot.com

Why is Google launching multiple apps with similar functionalities?

They already had Hangouts, they recently launched a group sharing app "Spaces". And now a new video calling app "Duo". They also have an app "Allo" which is another chatting platform.

I am not complaining or anything, I am just curious about what are they planning to do with their old apps? i.e. Hangouts?

jmfayard• 10 years ago

Google’s product strategy: Make two of everything For Google, its entire product lineup is just a big series of A/B experiments.

http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/10/googles-product-stra...

simonh4• 10 years ago

I'll just wait until other users have figured out which ones are useful and which are a waste of time, let Google kill the ones that fail and iterate on the ones that don't until either everyone else adopts the same strategy as me or Google figures out what the heck they're doing. I'll set an alarm to remind myself to check back in 5 years.

Navarr3• 10 years ago

AndroidPolice has an article today[1] that Hangouts has failed as an all-in-one messaging platform. They're going to focus it in on the enterprise - where usage is much more prevalent, apparently - whatever that means.

Hangouts is likely to become a Google Apps Slack competitor, I guess.

[1] http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/08/16/google-planning-focu...

technofiend• 10 years ago

I guess it depends on the enterprise... lots of places outright block google services: drive, e-mail, hangouts, etc.

snaky2• 10 years ago

Oh, finally they want to compete with Slack.

Google Talk group chat features were released in 2007.

mkj• 10 years ago

Is this using the same parts underneath as hangouts?

ende• 10 years ago

Have they announced when it will be discontinued?

crucifiction• 10 years ago

Late 2018

tkubacki2• 10 years ago

source? ...or it's just pointless trolling ?

emsy2• 10 years ago

A bit cynical but that was my initial thought as well. It's sad because FaceTime exists for so long and is so easy to use and I'd really like to have an app that I can use with both of my parents (one Android, one iOS). But I see Google failing with this already.

throwawaymsft• 10 years ago

Reputations are often earned.

euyyn3• 10 years ago

So you rather Duo not exist and keep not having an app that you can use with both of your parents?

type0• 10 years ago

If we will have Facetime and this, the correct name to use is Duopoly.

newscracker2• 10 years ago

Wire [1] is an app you could use across platforms for chat, voice calls and video calls (and even doodling). Sign up is using a phone number or an email address. It also has end-to-end encryption with multi-platform support and cross device sync (phone/desktop/laptop).

When I started using it a few months ago, the contacts discovery was a bit buggy, but it's worth a try. The feature set is quite rich.

[1] https://www.wire.com

crottypeter• 10 years ago

Isn't hangouts on iOS & android?

hackaflocka• 10 years ago

They really shouldn't re-use internal explanatory code names for final product branding.

vasili111• 10 years ago

VERY good question!

0xmohit3• 10 years ago

Have they announced when it will be discontinued?

Give them a chance to collect more data first. Many governments might be backing this service.

gvb2• 10 years ago

Have they announced when Hangouts will be discontinued?

First they deprecated SMS on Hangouts. Now they have replicated the video and voice portion. The next shoe to drop will be discontinuing Hangouts.

Ref: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/01/google-hangouts-7-0-f...

Goronmon• 10 years ago

Actually, the next step is to announce their new video chat app that will replace Duo. Once they've done that, they will announce the end-date for Duo.

serpix• 10 years ago

Is there anything currently that works similarly without a google or Facebook account? My dad is so computer/phone illiterate that he cannot/won't register for either of these.

It should work across iPhone/Android.

I ask because video calling between my son and my dad is no longer as simple as FaceTime after I switched to Android

thewhitetulip2• 10 years ago

I think there is something called imo in which video conferencing works in 2G network

thewhitetulip2• 10 years ago

Why the down vote? There actually is an app called "imo" which does both text and video chat in skew speed network

escap• 10 years ago

both wechat or line do video and/or audio call on iPhone/Android.

witty_username• 10 years ago

Some searching yielded https://appear.in/

(I'm not affiliated with that website)

spdionis• 10 years ago

Which by the way works very well for our daily meetings.

lozf2• 10 years ago

Appear.in is great, but like all the other WebRTC chat services, you still need to use another method of communication to notify the other part(y/ies) of the call either by phone, SMS, IM, email, IRC etc. so they can then click the link to your chat and grant their browser permission to use their mic and/or camera, IF their browser is up-to-date enough, and not Safari. ... That's what makes these otherwise perfect services suboptimal for the majority of non-techies.

ipsum2• 10 years ago

Duo doesn't require a Google account. From the article:

Duo is simple from start to finish. To get started, all you need is your phone number and you’ll be able to reach people in your phone’s contacts list. No separate account is required, so you can sign up in just a few steps.

tdkl4• 10 years ago

You could try Viber, it requires a phone number login though.

newscracker2• 10 years ago

I had suggested Wire [1] in a comment above [2]. It's cross platform, has cross device sync, and end-to-end encryption. Sign up can be using the phone number or an email address.

[1] https://www.wire.com

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12296477

sotojuan• 10 years ago

On the same week that they discontinued Hangouts on Air in favor of YouTube? Why is Google always making and closing stuff?

vincnetas• 10 years ago

Some things end up in different box than they were in before when you cleaning up your house. Have you never moved your code from one package to another?

yeukhon2• 10 years ago

A lot of companies I have seen so far don't always rebrand. They simply announce new release. IMO, it's actually better to announce new release than to rebrand. When you rebrand and offer similar feature, you are basically telling your user you are not committed to build anything long term. This is like building APIs. Users don't really care if your API is now running on a Linux host or on a Windows host, coded in Python or coded in Go. You do the refactoring transparent to users. Imagine your car's manufacturer is sold and re-brand every two years, how would you feel about your car?

dredmorbius2• 10 years ago

This is an exceptionally strong argument for having your internal and external representations separate. So that every fucking reorg or personnel shift doesn't require 3 billion people to update bookmarks and Web apps and password safes.

Some companies just can't get their branding straight. They launch a video product, then buy one, then try to keep them separate, then try to merge them, then kill one.

Or they launch any of a bazillion interactive chat apps, each worse than the first, and keep killing them off. Then wonder why people don't use them.

They have a secret sauce money machine and start fucking with it.

They create a fear-driven paranoia taillight chaser, set up really stupid rules about engagement, drive off their highly enthusiastic early-adopter crowd, try to cram it down everyone's throats, allow 2 billion random strangers on the Internet to set Calendar appointments (Scoble's blast at Slic Vic was classic), and mix a bazillion random Internet freaks with your personal email contacts.

They shove cameras into the world's face and the world bitchslaps them for it, rightly.

And that's the piddling stuff.

Then they create smoke alarms that cannot be turned off, thermostats that can't work without Internet, and buy, then sell, a war-making robot-terminator-dog company.

And they expect us to believe them that their Majick Cars will be bugproof, un-annoying, and non-lethal.

I think they'll find that when the time comes, the letter H will be well occupied by Hubris.

alaskamiller3• 10 years ago

Google culture is hiring the smartest or most motivated college grads, paying them to babysit legacy money printing systems built by the generation before them, then occasionally encouraging them to team up and clone popular services from other companies and startups.

The clones get passed around the campus for dogfooding until enough interest builds up and the project goes up the chain of command until a VP (at the time Marissa) signs off on it with notes on what to improve along with granting the necessary resources to spin it up.

Then if someone decides the project has legs they figure out how to engineer it for Google's audience and launch. If it doesn't work then the team disperse and move on to another project. Or it works and the team gets a moment in the sun.

Every single popular thing on the internet has a Google clone somewhere in the intranet.

yeukhon2• 10 years ago

It's an unfortunate situation for Google product engineers. It's basically a competition. It has some benefit and has some really big downside. If my reference is correct, usually there are more than one team building the same product (e.g. Google Plus).

wineisfine2• 10 years ago

Spot on, which is the opposite of Apple (under Jobs)

helloworld• 10 years ago

Sounds like Duo has a simple user experience, which is great. But it doesn't solve the eye-contact problem with video calls today.

When you look at the person on the screen whom you're talking to, that person sees you looking away, because you're not looking into the camera, which is somewhere on the edge of the screen. So you don't make eye contact with the person you're talking to.

And for me, that makes video calls feel weird.

option_greek• 10 years ago

Yup. Can't get over the feeling of looking down at the person you are talking to. If you look at the camera, you can't look at the person :(

flamedoge• 10 years ago

Just need 4 front facing cameras

gruez• 10 years ago

1. build an algorithm to detect (using open cv?) and adjust eye position so they look correct to the viewer 2. patent it and license it to apple/google/microsoft 3. ??? 4. profit

delta1• 10 years ago

    > build an algorithm 
    > adjust eye position

yes, those are the hard parts

sundvor• 10 years ago

Great point. Would be nice if we could integrate the lens into the display. :)

roryisok2• 10 years ago

Can't they just put a camera behind the screen? Been waiting for this for over a decade

wlievens2• 10 years ago

The screen would be in the way?

tintor• 10 years ago

Or put 4 cameras on four sides of the screen and merge the video feed into screen center POV.

michelb• 10 years ago

apple has a patent on something similar since 2006, http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=...

recently improved upon it: http://appleinsider.com/articles/09/01/08/apple_files_patent...

Wonder why it never made it into a product.

amarant• 10 years ago

Most phones have cameras behind their screens, good for taking close-ups of your index finger

natrius• 10 years ago

Now that people are coming up with ways to put people's real facial expressions in VR, most video calls are probably going to be replaced with avatars generated from your face that use your facial expressions captured by the front-facing camera.

https://vimeo.com/156034648

cma• 10 years ago

You can just virtually move the camera a bit if you are using something like Kinect V2 (with a tiny bit of stereo shadowing as a result).

2bitencryption• 10 years ago

To be honest, I never found this to be a huge problem.

After hundreds of Skype calls with people, I just don't notice it anymore.

Sure, to fix that problem would be nice. But I don't think the engineering required to put a camera behind a screen, or creepily adjusting people's pupils in realtime, are worth it to rectify what is hardly an issue.

EDIT: also, it's a bit weird to write a critique like yours for the launch of a new platform. No one else solves this issue, so why does Google not solving it suddenly make their platform pointless?

It's like if Tesla releases the Model 3 and you're like "Uh, it doesn't fly? Pass."

Alexss• 10 years ago

" also, it's a bit weird to write a critique like yours for the launch of a new platform"

I think this is a fair critique because the release announcement states the product should address the symptom that "nearly half of us never make video calls on mobile". If you believe the underlying problem is that lack of eye contact makes video calling low-value to many people this is not a viable solution.

nl• 10 years ago

I don't find the non-eye contact thing too big a deal.

But sounds like it might be Skype soon: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/gaze-ma...

scandox• 10 years ago

Entirely agree with you. This is the missing link in terms of making Video chat a good experience. I find voice is better because I concentrate on what the person is saying. With video I feel like my brain is exhausted trying to compensate for misread visual cues and trying to simulate eye-contact. Also that thing of seeing yourself is horrible...you keep monitoring your own expression which is just weird.

jeyashankher• 10 years ago

I have an iPhone 6S and the front camera seems to do a decent job with the eye-contact problem. I don't seem to need to do the look into the camera when taking selfies.

svantana• 10 years ago

To me, the obvious endgame is a 3D reconstruction of the image from the perspective of your eyes, so the screen becomes a "virtual window". I tried to pitch this to Skype a few years back, it felt like a no-brainer given that they were then recently acquired by Microsoft (which is big on similar technologies with Kinect and lately HoloLens). But they were completely uninterested! I think they were so used to Skyping that they didn't feel it was a problem.

knocte2• 10 years ago

End-to-end encrypted but not opensource is just trusting that it's really (well)encrypted.

Thanks, but no thanks.

misingnoglic• 10 years ago

I'll trust that Google knows what they're doing when implementing encryption.

rplnt• 10 years ago

Sure, but I also don't trust them to not harvest data from calls by side-channels for advertising purposes.

mattkevan2• 10 years ago

I'll probably trust them on the encryption bit, but it's less clear they know what they're doing...

Sylos• 10 years ago

The question is not whether Google knows how to do proper end-to-end-encryption, the question is whether they want to do it. They have a clear incentive to not do it properly, which is being able to sift through your data to sell it to advertisers.

sidcool6• 10 years ago

Sounds promising. But not sure what this adds on top of Hangouts, which has a great group (and of course one to one) video calling feature. The only difference seems that Duo works with phone numbers, not Google Accounts.

chetanahuja2• 10 years ago

"The only difference seems that Duo works with phone numbers, not Google Accounts"

Which is a huuuuuge difference. This is the same factor that made whatsapp so popular on the smartphone compared to all other other chat apps that were popular at the time (including google talk) but where each system was using a different account creation/login flow on that tiny screen, Whatsapp came along and had the brilliant insight/accident of simply supporting your phone's addressbook to find you and your friends. Even facebook chat couldn't keep up with them even though facebook app was installed pretty much on every internet connected phone at the time. Rest is history.

sidcool6• 10 years ago

Yes, being tied to Google account does seem limiting, after all there are more phone numbers than Google Accounts. I have a gut feeling that one of Allo and Duo will be a success.

karma_vaccum1233• 10 years ago

This limits and subtracts from Hangouts for no real benefit.

Hangouts works on phones, tablets and laptops. It does voice, video and text. Fragmenting these features across apps and devices seems to be a major step backwards...but apparently two apps is simpler than one?

sidcool6• 10 years ago

This strategy seems to have born out of Facebook's success with breaking up the app into specialized features (Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp etc.)

sinaa2• 10 years ago

It seems that a main differentiating feature is also the fact that all calls are end-to-end encrypted.

Perhaps as a video-calling alternative to Whatsapp? (given that neither of them are open source)

nojvek• 10 years ago

However like big brother, Google stores everything and runs machine learning algos on top. That's a big no no for privacy.

karma_vaccum1233• 10 years ago

I know these will be preinstalled on Android, but many friends and family use iOS and I will feel silly asking them to install Duo and Allo.

Hangouts is able to mix voice, video and text just fine. Why start requiring separate apps?

This is Google at its dumbest. They are squandering the small amount of momentum Hangouts has.

dingo_bat• 10 years ago

Hangouts is able to mix voice, video and text just fine.

For varying values of "just fine". For me, hangouts is probably the worst performing app on mobile, desktop and tablet. It's so bad that even Skype shames it. And FaceTime...well let's not even compare.

karma_vaccum1233• 10 years ago

So why can't it be fixed?

Nullabillity3• 10 years ago

At least it doesn't only run on Apple devices, like the complete joke that is FaceTime.

tmsam• 10 years ago

I only started using Hangouts a few months ago, and find the macOS experience acceptable and think the iOS implementation is dead on.

thomasahle• 10 years ago

Hangouts has always worked a lot better for me than Skype and Facebook video chat. Both on Android and desktop.

maruhan2• 10 years ago

i think it's more that skype and facetime are amazing

vmateixeira• 10 years ago

The fact that it needs a browser plugin in order for the video/voice features to work doesn't help either.

lern_too_spel• 10 years ago

Worse, now I have to find my friends' phone numbers. Is this targeted to people in developing countries who use apps like WhatsApp? Those people don't have fast enough mobile internet to make video calling work.

tonfa2• 10 years ago

WhatsApp is not specially an emerging market product, I think it is the most popular chat app in a bunch of European countries.

darklajid• 10 years ago

Ignoring that I probably won't use this (no fan of of that company), if it doesn't require a weird setup it might be more accessible than Hangouts.

At least last time I checked Hangouts required you to join G+ first? Is that still the case?

JoshTriplett• 10 years ago

No, Hangouts doesn't require G+. You can use it via Android or https://hangouts.google.com/ without joining G+.

Navarr3• 10 years ago

Duo only requires phone number (and that you periodically send your contacts to Google)

Allo I think will be the same - they're transitioning to phone # based auth instead of Google account auth so that using a Google account is not a limiting factor.

wutbrodo5• 10 years ago

Google's communications strategy has been bafflingly dumb for years and years now. Almost my ENTIRE social network (that was on chat; this was before every part of society was "on the Internet") used to be on Gchat. That's a massive network-effects advantage that they had ages before anyone else did (including Facebook, but Facebook's network did surpass them with the ability to find someone by their face).

Almost a decade of inexplicably stupid product decisions later, they've squandered their hugely valuable lead (and then some). I can't imagine why anyone would go out of their way to use any Google product whose usefulness is at all dependent on network effects (I've completely ignored the launch of Allo and Duo and, years after everyone else, have pretty much moved to FB Messenger as my primary messaging app). This is a pretty chronic Google problem that I noticed both from the inside and outside: their engineering and design talent are incredible, but the people responsible for the product and marketing side are evidently really, really bad at what they do.

This is part of why products like GMail or Google Search do so well, and products like G+ so poorly: you could be the only person in the world using GMail and it would be just as useful (and well-designed), while the quality of products like G+ depend less on their quality _per se_ and more on network effects, which Google's product/marketing is clearly too incompetent to do well.

ocdtrekkie3• 10 years ago

Also, Google Search and Gmail were REALLY GOOD back when Google made really good products, and they both seem to be treated as sacred there. Neither has received truly radical changes to fit with Google's new and often transient business focuses. Had Google made the mistake of replacing Gmail with Inbox, Gmail would've gone the way of everything else Google's done lately. But it seems like someone rightfully has ensured the two "big ones" stay largely unmolested.

LoSboccacc• 10 years ago

Yeah I remember early years gchat all my social network was using that for chatting, because you always had the email open anyway when on a browser and a chat right there was just too convenient.

Also, centralized chat history! Very few did that at the time and most had massive issues with unread tracking.

The moment I went on mobile and tried hangout it was dead to me. Read notification duplicates, phantom notifications for read messages, long startup times, and group everything came mich much later

Everyone jumped ship at that moment. The hangout app was THAT bad early years, and even after quite some time later real usability issues were never fixed.

csydas2• 10 years ago

This is a pretty chronic Google problem that I noticed both from the inside and outside: their engineering and design talent are incredible, but the people responsible for the product and marketing side are evidently really, really bad at what they do.

See, I don't even think it's marketing, it's Google not understanding what they already have and engineering a solution without a problem. Hangouts as an app on mobile is okay - I have qualms, but it works well enough. Hangouts on Desktop though is horrible, and it's integration into Gmail is frustrating at best (it took them a long time to get something as simple as status messages back to Hangouts after the switch). I get the impression Google saw what was happening with Slack and wanted Hangouts to be that (and also a successor to Wave); a persistent "better than email" communication method with every bell and whistle you could want for communication. But since Hangouts was released, they've removed the few fun social features, removed hangout plugins, and just took what was feature-rich and dumbed it down to the point where I wonder why I should have an entire separate page open dedicated to hangouts when even Skype is a more graceful solution with more functionality.

I really liked gChat when it was small and out of the way. I won't make the claim "everyone used it", but we certainly enjoyed in our GAFE environment as it was an appropriate intermediate between email and phone call.

Duo makes me ask the same question now - why do I want this as opposed to just Hangouts, unless video is going to be removed from Hangouts or only Duo is going to get improved performance updates. This seems like it could easily be a hangouts update instead of a standalone application, and Hangouts is already available cross-platform on iOS and Android, or via any modern web-browser.

tdkl4• 10 years ago

Their "Google groupthink ethos bubble" has become their biggest enemy. This comes apparent specially in social products and desktop client support.

apozem• 10 years ago

This is a pretty chronic Google problem that I noticed both from the inside and outside: their engineering and design talent are incredible, but the people responsible for the product and marketing side are evidently really, really bad at what they do.

The people designing Google products just do not understand human interaction. Excuse the Gawker network link, but I think this reaction to a past Google keynote hits the nail on the head.

http://gizmodo.com/5921823/does-google-have-any-social-skill...

cmrdporcupine• 10 years ago

My analysis is far more cynical.

People (especially product managers and designers) don't get promoted at big software companies for incrementally and carefully improving on some existing thing.

Novelty and churn pays off in the internal promo economy of a large company. Steady at the oars does not.

bane• 10 years ago

This is an important point and echoes my experience as well. After shuffling around all the Google chat apps, almost my entire network is now just using Facebook.

Great job Google.

ajscanlan• 10 years ago

Haven't used an iPhone in over a year but isn't this the same on iOS with Facetime and iMessage? One for video calls one for text messages?

thedangler• 10 years ago

The one thing I hate about hangouts and I could never figure out how to change was when searching for someone to text. It would search googles list of people with google+ and not my contact list first. Random people I don't even know named Mark, for example, would show up for me to text.

Still makes no sense to me.

I'm on iOS.

kzisme• 10 years ago

This is the most infuriating thing...now I just go through my contacts to find who I want to message (since their number exists but selecting SMS still brings up "On Hangouts")

jmspring• 10 years ago

Why should a video app be required for N of M situations? Just do one app that works well.

unexpected• 10 years ago

Is anyone able to download this? I am trying to download this on iOS, the App Store is giving me the message "this application is not available to download the in the US Store"

strange!

simplehuman• 10 years ago

"We’re beginning to roll out Duo for Android and iOS today, and it will be live worldwide in the next few days"

aandon• 10 years ago

aaaaaaand it's not on the App Store

sidcool6• 10 years ago

It's mentioned in the blog that it's going to be rolled out slowly over the next few days.

tommygunz99• 10 years ago

But there's a link. And clicking it doesn't work

HaloZero• 10 years ago

It sounds like they're just trying to replace Facetime. I know my parent adore Facetime but they don't know all about this email stuff. They just know they want to call me.

euyyn3• 10 years ago

What email stuff?

davidone_f• 10 years ago

Cool, let's try this. Oh my device (android 5.1.1 cm12) is not supported (yet? anymore?). Well, I think I can survive also without this super cool application :)

BinaryIdiot3• 10 years ago

I still think this is a huge mistake. It's great it's easy to use but now Google has two products that do video chat and they do not work together; why? If they eventually discontinue Hangouts then now we have to use two apps for texting and video?

The past several years have shown that providing a more integrated experienced typically brings a better user experience so this just smacks as a mistake.

gvb2• 10 years ago

They already have two products for SMS: Messenger and Hangouts, and they have deprecated SMS in Hangouts. Now they have two products for video chat.

The linear line through the data points says Hangouts are going away.

Ref: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/01/google-hangouts-7-0-f...

CaptSpify3• 10 years ago

providing a more integrated experienced typically brings a better user experience

Has it really? One of the reasons I originally signed onto the google ecosystem, was that they had their services split. My youtube was separate from gchat, which was separate from gmail. Now I don't use almost any google products, because I don't want everything linked back to one account. Whenever they do this, google half-asses the integration, and things end up in a weird state

BinaryIdiot3• 10 years ago

Has it really?

Absolutely and without a question. You will find exceptions here and there where the integration was done poorly or ultimately didn't make sense but the idea around providing integrated experiences is eliminating friction. Smart phones are fast but switching from one application to another is incredibly slow. Yes it's easy and yes you can download special launchers to slightly improve this but the fact remains that switching applications runs the risk of an application being unloaded from memory, it requires typically several taps and possibly yet another initialization.

But what if it works together in the same app? Take Google Maps and Waze for instance. Waze is awesome for gathering social data around traffic whereas Google Maps had some of that but not nearly at the same level of detail. Google integrated the Waze data into Google Maps so now, in the same application, you have both. No switching required. No need to run two mapping apps (because, let's face it, Waze's directions were never the greatest).

Let's go in a different direction now. Android didn't natively support finger print readers when companies, such as Samsung, started to include them. Due to the terrible integration you couldn't use finger prints so much of anything beyond unlocking your phone and even then there were several security vulnerabilities around that very point. Now that Google has included finger print reading, natively, into the platform you can use it everywhere. It's no longer a weird, separate, nebulous thing.

Maybe those examples are not the best but the point is that you must always march towards less and less friction. Once your app is fast and good enough the next step is integrations into other apps / systems to decrease the friction.

guelo• 10 years ago

I think there's definitely space for a video conference app that's simpler then Hangouts and cross-platform in contrast to Facetime.

Here's the US play store link where you can pre-register https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...

jalami2• 10 years ago

I'm still putting my money on vector.im and matrix.org. Closed source communication apps are not appealing to me, even if they come with an E2E promise.

From a business perspective this makes sense for Google. A big problem with Skype was always the lack of ubiquity. Lot of people had it, but it required another install and explicit configuration. Now that Skype is nearly bundled with W10 and WebRTC has made skype.com trivial, the gap for Google to move in is closing. If this rolls out with Google branded Android, people will use it irrespective of its merits (a la bundled Internet Explorer). Interop on iOS makes it stand out from Facetime. There's always room to change terms later when it becomes a household name.

Also, with all these services adding an E2E sticker on their communications, Google's hand was forced, they're not trend setters here and they shouldn't be applauded for being extremely late to the privacy game.

kartoffelmos• 10 years ago

vector.im looks cool, thanks for that :) Will be following it.

But man, that is one hard-to-use (browser) client.

NoGravitas• 10 years ago

I'm following matrix.org and vector.im development, hoping they'll get good and take off. Main thing stopping me from jumping on board is that running a matrix home server is said to be very resource intensive and my home server is already overloaded. Maybe later.

mxuribe4• 10 years ago

I've actually been running my own matrix.org home server quite fine for over a couple of months now on a $5/month vps via digital ocean. ADMITTEDLY, the scale of users on this instance is low in numbers, so your mileage may vary with more users, more activity, etc. I'm using this low-spec vps simply to test things out, and learn about matrix.org. You should give it a try. Whether you use digital ocean or any other competitor vps provider, if after installing the matrix.org home server you find its not to your liking, you just kill off the vps; cheap and easy experiment! ;-)

amelius• 10 years ago

Closed source communication apps are not appealing to me

And they should be forbidden, according to (admittedly a broad interpretation of) the telecommunications act of 1996, [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996

mxuribe4• 10 years ago

I actually liked the original matrix mobile client on android, but vector.im still rocks! (And of course vector.im will keep getting updates while the original matrix client i believe will not.) Regardless of the client used, I agree 100% with your comments on using open protocols such as matrix.org; that's going to be the future! Kudos!

Animats• 10 years ago

"Announces", yes; "releases", no. The Google Play Store offers only a "pre-register" button. Yet it has 4.9 stars already.

Looking forward to seeing an analysis of the protocol. Does it go through Google servers, or is it really peer to peer? How does the "end to end encryption" work? How are the keys generated and exchanged? Do the servers have the keys? Are you sure?

LukeB_UK• 10 years ago

From the post: "We’re beginning to roll out Duo for Android and iOS today, and it will be live worldwide in the next few days."

biot• 10 years ago

Agreed... I was looking for the magic words "uses the Signal protocol" or something along those lines.

zuxfer• 10 years ago

I still like google talk better. It was simpler. Elegant. And it was paradise for IM lovers.

limeyy• 10 years ago

Ok, just a FaceTime clone. When Apple added it to iOS it seemed redudant initially (because of Skype etc), but now everyone is using it all the time, because it's phone number based: It's a success.

So the real question is, if they wanted to make this, what the hell took them so long?

It really smells like a mistake, and catch-up, almost pitiful at this point.

jalami2• 10 years ago

I agree, they're really late to the game. It seems like a slam dunk business-wise as they can get the android and IOS market on the same app and cultivate a household name.

They would have been better doing so before the E2E craze went mainstream-ish, again from a business perspective. Now they can still leverage meta data, but it's not a juicy and lucrative as say, reading everyone's emails.

seanp2k2• 10 years ago

No reason to get excited about this, they'll just abandon it in a year or two like the rest of their products which aren't selling ads.

kevindeasis• 10 years ago

Man this and allo looks really interesting. I really can't wait for it to come out in Canada. I definitely wanna know how these product managers/owners or product feature creators are doing it in Google.

ProxCoques• 10 years ago

Video calling is a great example of something you don't need, but because you can do it, you do it. It's also impossible to refuse a video call for fear of being seen as secretive or worse when in fact you just don't care to look up somebody's nose when you talk to them.

I also wonder if it's mainly nerds who care about video calling because it speaks to their otherwise rather broken social skills. "Normal people look at each other when talking, right? Look! Using this heap of high tech makes me a normal person!"

Meanwhile, I note that amongst actual normal people, interest in video calling is low because they see it for what it is: a poor substitute for the real thing. Just as no normal person is into cyber dildonics.

cloudjacker• 10 years ago

Girls refuse video calls all the time because their hair isn't ready

Your premise is invalied

JumpCrisscross• 10 years ago

It's also impossible to refuse a video call

My camera never works. I've never had anyone lash back against this.

wkillerud• 10 years ago

Actually, video calling can be useful for those without hearing. Being able to use sign language in video is a useful alternative to texting.

sspiff• 10 years ago

It's also impossible to refuse a video call for fear of being seen as secretive or worse

Really? I refuse video calls all the time (or answer with audio only), and people never make a problem of it.

I also wonder if it's mainly nerds who care about video calling because it speaks to their otherwise rather broken social skills. "Normal people look at each other when talking, right? Look! Using this heap of high tech makes me a normal person!"

That's a pretty horrible thing to say.

Meanwhile, I note that amongst actual normal people, interest in video calling is low because they see it for what it is: a poor substitute for the real thing. Just as no normal person is into cyber dildonics.

Your personal experience is wildly different from mine. I know a ton of people who care deeply about video calling, and most of them are not technical at all. Parents and their adult children often use video calling to keep in touch (no as a replacement of real world visits, but as a supplement), and pretty much every expat or immigrant I've had extended contact with uses it to talk to their family back home.

Just because you have a personal distaste for it, doesn't mean you have to be mean towards everyone who does care about it.

madeofpalk• 10 years ago

Video calling may be a poor substitute for the real thing (face-to-face conversation), but there's so many use cases where the real thing isn't possible. What about when they don't live in the same place?

When I worked at Apple Retail, video calling (whether Skype or FaceTime or whatever) was mostly popular with the older generation - their relatives have moved away and when they call they still want to see their face.

csydas2• 10 years ago

I find your position strange and contrary to what I've observed.

I wouldn't say that my friends/family/colleagues first instinct is video call, but we certainly use it enough when the situation is appropriate. My cousin uses FaceTime to be with his gf when they are supposed to be doing homework, my family does FaceTime/Hangouts with one another to keep in touch (spread out across midwest), I've used FaceTime and Hangouts to provide technical support remotely when I wasn't able to get to a computer, we've used it to "stream" events that certain family members weren't able to attend (e.g., weddings, etc).

Video conferencing has a lot of normal everyday applications; it's also not uncommon for people to just join up on various webcam chats just to hang out with people online, or for people matched on dating sites to start with a video chat.

I don't know how you came to some of these conclusions, but I really don't think that this is representative of most users.

robertcope2• 10 years ago

You are wrong. You are probably socially inept and assuming everyone else is, no offense. My family video calls all the time. Two year olds need the visual and family wants to see the kid.

Nobody gives a crap if you decline a call, video or not.

techaddict009• 10 years ago

Aren't a bit late to the bot party?

subhrm• 10 years ago

Not in India :(

akerro• 10 years ago

a feature in Duo called Knock Knock which lets you see live video of your caller before you answer, giving you a sense of what they’re up to and why they want to chat

Where can I report this as a bug? That literally misses the point of "call". Call starts before it's started for a caller.

alain94040• 10 years ago

Does Knock Knock offer the same possibilities as chat roulette?

aluhut2• 10 years ago

I don't have a number on my Pad...there is not even a Sim in there. Why can't it be just their damn Google account?! I dont even want to give my phone number to them and when I'm in a foreign country i don't want them to easy Switch between WiFi and the super expensive Roaming just because I went in the wrong corner of the Hotel room...

kyrra• 10 years ago

The device you activate Duo on doesn't need a sim. Just put in your phone's number and you can activate when it comes through.

aluhut2• 10 years ago

As I wrote above: I don't want to give them my phone number.There are other ways of registration. I don't want my phone number flying around in God knows what ad Networks. This is unneccessary madness and nobody should be OK with that

tdkl4• 10 years ago

No desktop support, one device only, they must be joking.[1]

I just hope it can be disabled with rest of the Google bloatware when I buy my next phone.

[1]http://www.reddit.com/r/android/comments/4xxnjl/_/d6jawai

Tobold• 10 years ago

Yes, this my major complaint, too.

I have 3 Android devices and can use this only on the one that has a SIM card? And even if the others had SIM cards, they'd be on different accounts? WTF.

tdkl4• 10 years ago

Viber solves this. You need a phone number to create an account, but other devices can be added as trusted devices.

When you install the client on such device, Viber app on the main phone serves as a authenticator and displays a QR code/PIN that you enter on the other device. This adds the other device as trusted and can use the account, contacts get synced to it.

I have no clue who in Google really thinks their solution will be popular. Someone need to shake up that company a bit and make it step out of their bubble.

intoverflow22• 10 years ago

This is pretty standard these days, mobile only and phone number authentication are what the general public are used to.

noahmbarr• 10 years ago

Facetime benefits from Apple's consistent hardware compression.

It's why Skype and other platforms have had such a hard time touching it in terms of video quality.

nagarjun• 10 years ago

It's already bad enough that I have a row of chat apps (WhatsApp, Messenger, Hangouts, Skype, Slack, Telegram etc.) on my phone because I can't get everyone I know to agree on one app and now, Google's trying to get me to add yet another icon to that list! I love Telegram but I couldn't get more than a few friends to try it out and even then, no one checks their Telegram anymore because none of THEIR friends are on it. Even though I love the tech here, I can't get enough people to try and use it.

Not sure why this had to be its own app. Could have just been included into Allo. Also, all of the other apps I mentioned above have some form a desktop app (which is in a way, the biggest factor for me considering that's where I spend most of my time). Sigh! Great tech, terrible packaging.

T-10002• 10 years ago

Someone should build a meta video calling app: Make a normal phone call, and if the app detects that both parties have a common video calling app installed on their devices, the meta app notifies the caller ("Press * for video") and helps reconnect the call with the video calling app.

draugadrotten• 10 years ago

Hmm that's how iPhone works.

DropbearRob2• 10 years ago

what?? no threema?

but seriously I have the same problem. I liked that hangouts was bringing it all together and had live hangouts, and collaborative document editing and everything.. it feels like they just really didn't work on making hangouts lag free and high throughput and bringing the people there with superior quality calling.

CaptSpify3• 10 years ago

It's already bad enough that I have a row of chat apps

And this is why we need to be using open protocols, instead of walled-off systems. If I had one client that could integrate all of these, I'd use them. But since I need one install per chat-system, I end up just using none of them.

comex• 10 years ago

You shouldn’t have to worry about whether your call will connect, or if your friend is using the same type of device as you are.

...From the blurb from app that only runs on two operating systems (notably excluding Windows Phone), is proprietary (preventing third party clients from being written for other systems), and has no support for desktop operating systems (laptops are devices too).

On the last point, I suppose mobile-only for messengers is the new normal, but I for one frequently use iMessage and FaceTime from my MacBook in addition to my phone - depending on which device is closer, mainly - so Allo would be a significant downgrade for me. For video calls, laptops have an advantage over phones if there's more than one person on your side of the call, since you can get farther away from the camera to let everyone into the picture, without awkwardly keeping your arm held out horizontally or whatever.

ocdtrekkie3• 10 years ago

Credit where credit is due, most Microsoft apps, like Skype, work on Mac, iOS, Android, and Windows. I have gravitated to Skype not because it isn't an awful piece of software (it totally is), but because nobody can tell me they can't run it.

izacus4• 10 years ago

Does this even work from a deskop computer or is it a mobile app only?

DropbearRob2• 10 years ago

that's a great question. I cant test it because as it stands it isn't showing up for me (just showing that I'm still "registered" for it) but since it connects using a phone number (like whatsapp) I wonder how they authenticate the phone number on desktops/laptops? surely it'd be some kind of 2 factor auth, so it should be possible.. but I wonder whether it ships ready to do it.

soufron3• 10 years ago

Wow this is so much the future... Between my 4g video native capability, skype (remember), facetime, etc. that was missing. Thank you Google for putting well-paid engineers to solvant this.

blokhasie• 10 years ago

How does this add any value above existing products that do the same?

wodenokoto• 10 years ago

parent is being sarcastic.

camiller5• 10 years ago

Well, I heard skype got rid of encryption, while this is encrypted end to end.

You don't run this through your google account, only your phone number is needed to sign up.

The new video protocol supposedly degrades better if you go somewhere where the service is slower.

I'm sure there are others.

JustSomeNobody• 10 years ago

Don't forget the need for yet more proprietary protocols.

soufron3• 10 years ago

How many similar apps do we have already? We are increasingly solving problems that dont exist.

0xmohit3• 10 years ago

We are increasingly solving problems that dont exist.

In the process, we are attempting to divert attention from unsolved real problems.

soufron3• 10 years ago

Reading the comments... You guys know that any 3G/4G phone with a camera can make videocalls with awesome quality, right ?

shermozle• 10 years ago

For only 60c/minute and I think I've had one call where it was correctly configured kn both ends.

pjc50• 10 years ago

How? I've never seen a button for that on my phones.

mercora• 10 years ago

for some reason this seems mostly dead now. Not that it is not possible but it is not implemented in almost all phones.

msh2• 10 years ago

Are you talking about 3g video calls?

Quality is absolutely not awesome and then you ware back to paying roaming charges when out of the country....

rattler• 10 years ago

I like that the apps name is tachyon.

abstractbeliefs3• 10 years ago

Why would one use this when similar functionality (Hangouts video streaming) has just been killed and moved to Youtube Live?

bogomipz• 10 years ago

Video Hangouts has been killed? Isn't Hangouts a business-centric offering, I haven't heard that its been killed. Its a large part of "Chrome for Work."

At any rate these have different use cases, one is enterprise focused and the other is mobile only.

camiller5• 10 years ago

The hangouts-on-air live streaming was killed/moved to youtube. You can still do group video calls in hangouts, just not spin out a live stream for non-participant viewers.

_ea1k• 10 years ago

Hangouts live streaming to large numbers of recipients has been killed (Hangouts On Air) in favor of its superior YouTube equivalent.

Hangouts video chat is still alive and well. Duo is the thing that will get hyped and abandoned in a year or so. Maybe then the features will get rolled into Hangouts and Messenger or something.

buro9• 10 years ago

I'm going to presume that this isn't available to anyone who has a Google Apps account, as that has been the trend of nearly all product launches by Google recently.

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/play/86WVa8b_...

Not available to Apps accounts:

* Google Family Library Sharing (Android apps sharing)

* Google Play Music Family Sharing (music collection sharing)

* Project Fi

* Google Spaces

* YouTube Red

* YouTube Music

Given that is most of the recent product launches, the chances of Duo and Allo being added to that list would appear to be very high.

d2p• 10 years ago

This one actually says no account required. Seems to use your phone number, like WhatsApp etc. do

(that also probably means it'll never leave mobile to be usable on desktops, like Hangouts?!)

aprescott• 10 years ago

I have an Apps account and just installed it from the Play Store.

robertcope2• 10 years ago

Yeah, as someone who has had an Apps account for a long time, it sucks that we are constantly and consistently the last ones to get access to new products. We're PAYING them, damnit.

diimdeep• 10 years ago

Guy with beard and hipster glasses - check.

mattkevan2• 10 years ago

Are the same people responsible for Microsoft's endless rebranding of products and services now working at Google?

It's exhausting keeping track of what's either just been released or cancelled on any particular day.

lazyjones• 10 years ago

Wasn't WebRTC going to solve all this (e.g. https://appr.tc)? What happened, has it become browser cruft?

lozf2• 10 years ago

WebRTC handles the actual p2p audio and video, but has no method of signaling the other party for attention to actually join the "call", -- no concept of userid, so you'd always need to send a link to your WebRTC service via another channel - SMS, WhatsApp, Email, IRC, ... or some other "new" service, that's really just a wrapper to handle the userid / notification problem, and uses WebRTC underneath.

nsgi• 10 years ago

Notifications are possible with Service Workers.

satyajeet23• 10 years ago

Facetime Rival? Nope.

dzmien• 10 years ago

Why didn't they just update hangouts? I actually use hangouts for video calls with relative frequency, and I wish it was better adapted to changes in network speed like they say Duo is. I think it would be better if "Duo" was just integrated into hangouts as an update. I like hangouts because it allows me to use one app for voice, text and video.

ethanbond5• 10 years ago

Well it wouldn't be Google with any fewer than 4 semi-competing apps in their own portfolio.

perseusprime11• 10 years ago

My guess is Duo will be like Inbox competing with gmail. I am guessing here but I think Google is on to something around innovation. They are launching innovative future facing apps without the constraints of legacy systems. They will use this approach to figure out which features work and back port them into their legacy apps. Not a bad approach if it works.

xeniak• 10 years ago

Duo looks like it doesn't require a Google account; just a phone number - think WhatsApp.

Navarr3• 10 years ago

Hangouts is likely to become a Google Apps Slack competitor, I guess.

[1] http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/08/16/google-planning-focu...

junker101• 10 years ago

Also, the security aspect: Hangouts would get a bunch of backlash in the Enterprise world if they added the Allo type features to it. So they have pretty much to have separate systems for Enterprise vs Consumer if they want to integrate all the Google Now capabilities.

Eridrus• 10 years ago

Many people/companies use hangouts for video conferencing because all of the solutions in the space suck in one way or another.

eeeeeeeeeeeee• 10 years ago

Seriously. The entire Google Hangouts experience is extremely unfriendly and difficult to use. It's a great service, but the UX is awful. It's hard to get any non-technical person into a Hangouts call for the first time.

_wp3r• 10 years ago

http://hangouts.google.com/start

That link can actually make it much easier for the use case you described. The url after it loads can be shared.

cptskippy• 10 years ago

Absolutely and the experience in mobile is completely disjointed from the desktop experience. When and what it decides to log is also quite arbitrary.

paulftw• 10 years ago

My guess it's an independent team inside Google decided "let's make a better facetime" and starting from scratch was easier than wrapping their heads around a several years old codebase.

amitheonlyone• 10 years ago

I don't understand why they need to have different apps doing the same thing. I am on the same boat as you, using Hangouts for video calls quite frequently. Instead of releasing a new app like Duo, they should have first fixed performance issues with Hangouts and added this as an update. Then there is Allo. Google has weird thinking.

ehosca• 10 years ago

because Hangouts is going away ... search the Play store for Allo ...

findjashua• 10 years ago

They probably want to focus hangouts on enterprise and Duo on consumer market

cylinder2• 10 years ago

Hangouts is so clunky, I avoid using it. I'm excited about Duo because it's so minimalistic and just works. Great for quick video chats with parents.

nxc18• 10 years ago

Wow, I'm so glad they made yet another video calling app. I was almost beginning to feel like I knew how to call the people I care about. So glad I'll start hearing 'I'll call you on Duo', which will be great when I'm at my desktop computer.

feelin_googley2• 10 years ago

And it let's the caller see what you're doing before they call. Brilliant!

Of course, people like Zuckerberg can't use this feature because they cover up the camera lens on their laptops with tape.

camiller5• 10 years ago

No, it lets the recipient of the call see the caller, so they can choose to answer or not. It does not let the caller see who they are calling before they answer. Also the tape on your laptop won't matter since it is phone only for now.

bisby• 10 years ago

The #1 thing I want from a chatting/calling app is the ability to have a synchronized conversation on my phone and my desktop. Facebook and google handle this really well. When I'm at my computer, i dont want to pick up my phone. when im on the move, i dont want to miss messages.

The #2 thing I want is to be able to pick the app I use. I like pidgin, i want to use pidgin. I hate having to open gmail to use certain hangouts features. This tends to go hand in hand with the "I'll call you on X" thing. I dont care where people are calling me from/at if receiving it is centralized.

api• 10 years ago

Didn't you hear that desktop is dead?

anentropic• 10 years ago

Hope it works better than Hangouts

i.e. without randomly having to reboot your laptop before it will work

syshum3• 10 years ago

I can assure you that you will never have to reboot your laptop before it will work... as it will not work at all on your laptop. It is for Android and iOS only.

bigbugbag• 10 years ago

don't you know that you can run android apps on any computer that can run google chrome ? [1]

personally I stay far away from chrome and any thing google, so for running android apps on my laptop I go the emulator route [2], I use genymotion.

[1] http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/3/8339197/android-apps-on-win... [2]: http://techapple.net/2014/05/5-best-android-emulators-linux-...

mderazon3• 10 years ago

Haha, happens to me every time. Seems like a Chrome problem on Mac.

Always need to kill coreaudio process before a call, just to be sure.

syshum3• 10 years ago

Not for everyone, just People on Android and ios mobile devices...

wrsh07• 10 years ago

By my math and some light search, Android | iOS accounts for 95% of smartphones sold [1], and there are about 2 billion smartphone users [2].

Is 1.9 billion a small number? I understand there are people who don't use smartphones, but this obviously isn't targeted at them. Besides, many people use phones for nearly all personal communication [I use mine for everything, including email].

I certainly get being upset that some apps are mobile only [especially productivity apps]. But this one kind of makes sense.

[1] http://tech.firstpost.com/news-analysis/96-8-percent-new-sma...

[2] http://www.statista.com/statistics/330695/number-of-smartpho...

1_2__3• 10 years ago

Yes, it matters. Google et al. we trying to convince the world desktop is dead because they make more money on mobile. Maybe fine for snap chatting teens, but the rest of the world needs grown-up software that Google doesn't want to bother to provide.

syshum3• 10 years ago

hmm there are 7 billion people in the world, according to you 1.9 billion use Antroid or iOS.

This means there are ~5 billion that do not, thus basic math concludes that this new app is not even for the majority of people and far far far far far from the "everyone" claimed.

netrus• 10 years ago

APK is now available: http://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google-inc/duo-by-google/duo-by...

losteverything• 10 years ago

In my entire post tech life and post tech environment I have never seen anyone use, talk or desire to have a video call. (Save 1 when a patron tested FaceTime on their new iPhone.)

What will make video calling desireable for the average Joe?

funkyy• 10 years ago

I often use it to call my family and friend abroad. It is quite handy once you get used to it.

eliseumds• 10 years ago

People talk to their families, girl/boyfriends, team mates, interviewers and so on.

bagacrap• 10 years ago

I see a lot of people using it with family members (i.e. parents, grandchildren, etc.). Friends don't really use it with friends.

cholantesh• 10 years ago

My extended family is spread across the globe, so the prospect of seeing them without having to expend considerable resources in travel makes it very desirable.

camiller5• 10 years ago

My daughter uses facetime every evening talking to one or another of her girlfriends from high school. I think certain demographics will be more inclined to use it than others.

rogerdpack2• 10 years ago

So in essence this is an attempt to be a facetime competitor?

ubertaco• 10 years ago

My fiancée lives 937 miles away (not that anyone's counting). Video calling is like basic sustenance for us.

msh2• 10 years ago

When travelling its nice to be able to video chat with my wife and kids. Its more personal than just voice and my kids seems to like the video part, before they were able to hold interest in a phone call they were interested in the video part.

vthallam4• 10 years ago

I like quick video calls with friends/family than long voice calls. It's intimate and always a better way of talking to someone closer.

josh_carterPDX• 10 years ago

Can't wait to hear how they're going to change it four times then abandon it and announce they're working more on Hangouts.

decayy• 10 years ago

Knock Knock feature is probably the worst feature i can think of to put in a video calling app.

It sounds so fun rejecting a loved ones call because you're busy.

sickbeard• 10 years ago

Reminds me of Microsoft. Makes a bunch of products.. nobody cares.

vorotato• 10 years ago

No desktop version? Why would anyone use this over hangouts?

jijji• 10 years ago

They are trying to do what viber has been doing for years

bfrog• 10 years ago

I still long for the days of a real gtalk native app

pinewurst• 10 years ago

What's in this for Google? Another source of information to collate?

vthallam4• 10 years ago

Guess i'm in the minority of users here who loves this app and really wanted a facetime like thing on Android.

Hangouts work, but it's heavy and not a good experience overall. And facetime is ios only, so Duo will definitely bridge this gap.

I read on a Verge's article that Google wants to make Hangouts enterprise focussed by integrating more into the Google apps and keep Allo/Duo as the consumer focused communication apps which i think is a great strategy.

Once all of android users get this pre installed, i think its not difficult to get rest of the users use this.

mikecb• 10 years ago

make Hangouts enterprise focussed by integrating more into the Google apps and keep Allo/Duo as the consumer focused communication apps which i think is a great strategy.

This makes a lot of sense: there are some big differences in the experiences wanted by these two groups.

Edit: and there's a whole story about that: https://www.engadget.com/2016/08/16/google-hangouts-business...

JshWright2• 10 years ago

As a Project Fi user, I will very much miss the ability to seamlessly carry on SMS conversations from Hangouts on all of my devices. I really hope that functionality is added to Allo.

mpwoz• 10 years ago

Have you tried pushbullet? I use it for texting from my desktop and it works quite well. I'm not affiliated with them, just a happy user.

https://www.pushbullet.com/

untog4• 10 years ago

Once all of android users get this pre installed

And how far in the future will that be? Will Samsung install it on their phones?

I'm sure Duo isn't bad, but I'm not going to be able to convince my friends to sign up for it when Facebook Messenger already exists.

vthallam4• 10 years ago

Not very long i guess based on the comments from Sundar/VP of communications at Google's comments. They say they have a great plan for user acquisition.

This is a new ground up video app and so the performance is better compared to other apps(I tested it, its definitely better than hangouts/messenger/skype, but probably same as facetime quality).

skynetv22• 10 years ago

yay! one more app to do the same thing, but "simpler" "faster" and now its "human"

here is what Hangouts was described as

https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2015/08/google-hangouts-now-...

simpler, faster, beautiful

and what more, now I have to use ONLY my mobile to use duo, which means no more comfort of my mac or desktop, I have to keep my phone attached to my face. yay!!

I taught my technology challenged mom to use the terrible hangouts interface, now I have to teach her Allo? thanks, I am moving her to facetime or skype. at least they work reliably and no danger of a new epyks or timefaceme improvments anytime soon

TheHappyRock• 10 years ago

I'll be happy if they can settle on a plan and stick to it for more than 6 months. The GChat, Voice, and Hangouts strategy has been frustrating because the features I wanted would land in different apps with varying levels of support. For example, hangouts dialer is nice for free voip, but I am not sure I can fully let go of voice.

wnevets• 10 years ago

Just bring back google talk and end this madness.

spullara• 10 years ago

It is really painful that Apple couldn't open source FaceTime because of a patent troll.

https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/1xuzif/what_ever_hap...

sidcool6• 10 years ago

I have been trying to get my phone number verified but it's not working

mderazon3• 10 years ago

They block non US phones for now

sidcool6• 10 years ago

It's working now though.

shidoshi• 10 years ago

I think it's uncool for Dug and team that google decided to name this the same thing as their product. But, the big dog will always eat your food first.

marme• 10 years ago

Terrible name there is already a popular security auth app called Duo with a similarly named mobile app. https://duo.com/

This is likely trademark infringement because they are both on the app store and it is easy to confuse the two apps and they are both the top 2 apps now on the play store

greggman• 10 years ago

So much for being easy. I don't have sms

atxcrab• 10 years ago

I wonder why there is no integration with default contacts app in android . I think its a bad idea to release app with simplicity as objective with out providing a simple way of using it with out knowing much about it.

.. or is it because its two teams at google ?

Google Duo, a simple 1-to-1 video calling app

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