If you noticed a notification within Google Duo in recent days that mentions “Duo is getting even better” and were confused, well let’s catch you up! Google Duo is going away soon, although it will (already sort of did) become more powerful with the features of Google Meet before being renamed to Google Meet.
We first learned about Google’s Meet plans almost two months ago now, where they explained that there was no need for both Duo and Meet to exist at the same time. The simplicity of Duo is no more, unfortunately, so while Google claims that Duo is “getting even better,” that’s certainly an opinion.
Here’s what you need to know about the end of Google Duo.
- Back in June, Google told us that Duo would soon see a big update that would bring over all of the features of Google Meet. That means things like virtual backgrounds, scheduling meetings, live sharing, integration with services like Gmail, and an increase in video call sizes were all coming to Duo. That has basically happened at this point and is why you are seeing the message at the top of Duo. If you go to start a new Duo call, you should see a bunch of new Meet-related items at the top.
- As far as Google Duo’s features and contacts and call histories go, those are all sticking around. Again, this is really just a big update for Duo to get Meet features, without losing the stuff it already had.
- If you still want to access Duo on the web, you can through the typical spots you might right now, but eventually you’ll redirect to meet.google.com/calling. And that makes sense because Duo is becoming Meet.
- Once Google updates everyone’s Duo with new Meet features, they plan to rename Google Duo to “Google Meet” before the end of 2022. At that time, the other Google Meet you already have on your phone will basically be renamed to “Meet Original” and then deprecated.
- And that’s pretty much it. Google Duo is getting all of Google Meet’s features before becoming Google Meet.
That message at the top of your Google Duo app is the beginning of a new journey for Google’s video calling services. To learn more or get specifics on anything I didn’t mention, Google has a FAQ setup here.