Google Duo’s future uncertain as plans to merge it with Meet were unsuccessful

Around this time last year, Google created a unified team that would work on Google Meet and Duo. Their primary goal was to merge the two platforms and make them a viable solution for both consumer and enterprise customers.

According to a report from 9to5Google, the merger was being called “Duet” – a clever combination of Duo and Meet, of course. It was to take the best parts of each service and combine them into Meet, making it the sole app for everything. Now, however, 9to5 is reporting that this merger has not been successful.

Apparently, most of that team has departed their positions on Duo, and now work on Meet exclusively in addition to its enterprise features. When asked about all of this, Google stated that they currently have “no change n our plans to continue investing in our consumer users”.

It’s important to note that in 2021 alone, the service received several major updates like Material You, HD screen sharing, 18 video effects, better screen sharing controls, support for more tablets and foldable devices, new spam protection methods, and more as well as many vital, but less visible or appreciated fixes. Despite this, many of these improvements were simply the result of other projects and partnerships, and were less meant as active and intentional development for Duo.

While Google does have a bunch of stuff planned for 2022 for consumer and business users, it did not specify whether Duo would be included in those plans, which s telling. It should be noted that Google at no point stated in their reply to 9to5Google that they were shuttering development on Duo. If they do though, consumers would again be the square peg that’s forced to fit into a round hole.

Just as with Google Chat, Hangouts users were onboarded into the enterprise tools that the new Chat provides, but without many of the features that they had in Hangouts, which just seems a bit lazy. Most of the feature parity we now have has only come recently – well after Chat’s relaunch. I’d be interested to see what you think about all of this, so let’s discuss in the comments. Do you use Duo, or do you use something else for video chat?