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.
The problem is that I want such an app to exist (and thrive), but that history taught me not to get my hopes up when it comes to Google products. Chances are they will fail to gain a significant userbase and/or the product (better yet project) will be discontinued.
My thought exactly - the timing is really great in a way.
- Skype gets worse with every release (especially Mac & Linux) and the call quality is still stuck in somewhere 2008
- Facetime is cool but still Apple Ecosystem only
- Phone messengers (WhatsApp et al.) aren't really serious on the topic
Real-time video is plain hard, especially when latency comes into play. Having Google tackling this with their unique technology (QUIC / lots of low-level performance expertise) and resources (GCP / CDN), I'm really looking forward to try it out.
> They are basically saying it's useless to them so why not let somebody else give a try.
Their standard reason is that most products use tons of internal API calls/private modules and it would take a lot of hours to replace those with code they're willing to release.
"better app" can just be an app with less features, that's more buggy, that's going to be around in ten years. Mom and dad don't need to go learning a new app every couple of years.
Video chat has been around since forever. Having a major player like Google wade into the fray, destroy all the small fry, then bail out (as it has done many times before)? Not good for the market.
Skype was launched in 2003, and IIRC was primarily voice for the first couple of years. That brings us up to the 10 years that's apparently the required expected longevity to even consider an app.
Whatever small fry exists on the market, they have survived the Skype juggernaut, FaceTime, Google Hangouts and Facebook chat. I find it highly unlikely that Google Duo is going to be a uniquely destructive force.
Because there are absolutely no other video chat apps in existence on both Android and iOS? Duo is the only possible option?
The point is given the many, many other video chat apps that do already exist and fill this function, several of them produced by Google, what does Google think it's doing bringing out yet another one.
I thought Google already has a product that does video calls across iOS and Android... Hangouts. I don't understand why they are doing this independently of a product they already have.
> Mr. Nikhyl Singhal joined Credit Karma after four years at Google, where he held several senior product roles, including leading Hangouts, Google Talk, Google Voice and Google Photos.
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.
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.
