37 ms·

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

311 points by marban 10y ago

nitin_flanker 10y ago
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 10y 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-strategy-make-two-of-everything/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/10/googles-product-stra...
  - simonh 10y 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.
    - erichocean 10y ago
      For a self-identified "late adopter", you sure comment early on.
      - simonh 10y ago
        I've been early adopting Google products for years, many of which sadly nolonger exist. That's the problem.
- Navarr 10y 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-focus-hangouts-business-consumers-allo-duo-release/ http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/08/16/google-planning-focu...
  - technofiend 10y ago
    I guess it depends on the enterprise... lots of places outright block google services: drive, e-mail, hangouts, etc.
    - ohstopitu 10y ago
      I guess they mean those that already pay for google apps.
  - snaky 10y ago
    Oh, finally they want to compete with Slack. Google Talk group chat features were released in 2007.
mkj 10y ago
Is this using the same parts underneath as hangouts?
ende 10y ago
Have they announced when it will be discontinued?
- crucifiction 10y ago
  Late 2018
  - tkubacki 10y ago
    source? ...or it's just pointless trolling ?
- emsy 10y 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 10y ago
    Reputations are often earned.
  - euyyn 10y ago
    So you rather Duo not exist and keep not having an app that you can use with both of your parents?
    - emsy 10y ago
      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.
      - Fuxy 10y ago
        I don't see a better app at the moment since Skype got bought by Microsoft and all the encryption got nerfed. Although I get where you're coming from. It would also be nice if all products discontinued by google would just get open sourced. They are basically saying it's useless to them so why not let somebody else give a try.
serpix 10y 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
- thewhitetulip 10y ago
  I think there is something called imo in which video conferencing works in 2G network
  - thewhitetulip 10y ago
    Why the down vote? There actually is an app called "imo" which does both text and video chat in skew speed network
- escap 10y ago
  both wechat or line do video and/or audio call on iPhone/Android.
- witty_username 10y ago
  Some searching yielded https://appear.in/ https://appear.in/ (I'm not affiliated with that website)
  - spdionis 10y ago
    Which by the way works very well for our daily meetings.
    - sealjam 10y ago
      Seconded, I've been very impressed with this service.
  - lozf 10y 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.
sotojuan 10y ago
On the same week that they discontinued Hangouts on Air in favor of YouTube? Why is Google always making and closing stuff?
- vincnetas 10y 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?
  - yeukhon 10y 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?
  - dredmorbius 10y 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.
helloworld 10y 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.
- gruez 10y 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 10y ago
    > build an algorithm > adjust eye position yes, those are the hard parts
    - donpark 10y ago
      [Recent ML work on Gaze Manipulation](http://www.creativeai.net/posts/6fokKr6xuytqsnT9F/deepwarp-photorealistic-image-resynthesis-for-gaze http://www.creativeai.net/posts/6fokKr6xuytqsnT9F/deepwarp-p...) [Online interactive demo](http://sites.skoltech.ru/compvision/projects/deepwarp/ http://sites.skoltech.ru/compvision/projects/deepwarp/)
      - kyriakos 10y ago
        is it just me or the examples are just creepy ? anyway I think its a minor issue. I am more worried about if I am dressed / groomed appropriately for the video call rather than if I am having constant eye contact.
        spacemanmatt 10y ago
        confirmed creepy. not just you.
knocte 10y ago
End-to-end encrypted but not opensource is just trusting that it's really (well)encrypted. Thanks, but no thanks.
- misingnoglic 10y ago
  I'll trust that Google knows what they're doing when implementing encryption.
  - rplnt 10y ago
    Sure, but I also don't trust them to not harvest data from calls by side-channels for advertising purposes.
    - scrollaway 10y ago
      And if they were open sourcing it, you'd say there's no way to know they're not doing that in the compiled release. Reverse Engineering is the only viable way of determining this stuff. I'd love for it to be open source but it has nothing to do with this.
      - knocte 10y ago
        >And if they were open sourcing it, you'd say there's no way >to know they're not doing that in the compiled release. Only if they don't use deterministic builds.
  - mattkevan 10y ago
    I'll probably trust them on the encryption bit, but it's less clear they know what they're doing...
  - Sylos 10y 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.
sidcool 10y 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.
- karma_vaccum123 10y 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?
  - sidcool 10y 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.)
    - allendoerfer 10y ago
      The only break up here was Messenger, and even there they did not just continue the feature but gradually phased it out to make sure people are actually following. Messenger still uses the same network behind and did not create a separate one. Instagram and Whatsapp are just examples of how not to kill a successful product. Turns out it's quite simple: You change nothing.
      - intoverflow2 10y ago
        >Instagram and Whatsapp are just examples of how not to kill a successful product. Turns out it's quite simple: You change nothing. For a long time it seemed like the strategy was to change nothing. Now it's become clear the strategy is to be scared of changing anything, just leave it to fester and fall behind then panic and recklessly start cloning competitors features and diluting what made the service compelling in the first place.
- 10y ago
karma_vaccum123 10y 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 10y 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_vaccum123 10y ago
    So why can't it be fixed?
  - Nullabillity 10y ago
    At least it doesn't only run on Apple devices, like the complete joke that is FaceTime.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - jsmthrowaway 10y ago
      [Here lies a substantive question that was posed to a content-free comment. Edit lasts longer than delete, so you now get to read its depressingly gray tombstone. Let's reflect together on this.]
      - izacus 10y ago
        That's a very strong defense of a piece of software that deliberately prevents you from communicating with people that haven't bought the same piece of electronics. Think on that for a moment - "Sorry grandmama, I can't send you iMessage or talk to you in person since you didn't spend your pension on an expensive Apple device." For something as fundamental as human-to-human communication, closed, single vendor, protocols and systems deserve every criticism (and yes, Google deserves it as well).
jmspring 10y ago
Why should a video app be required for N of M situations? Just do one app that works well.
unexpected 10y 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 10y 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 10y ago
aaaaaaand it's not on the App Store
- sidcool 10y ago
  It's mentioned in the blog that it's going to be rolled out slowly over the next few days.
  - tommygunz99 10y ago
    But there's a link. And clicking it doesn't work
HaloZero 10y 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.
- euyyn 10y ago
  What email stuff?
davidone_f 10y 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 :)
BinaryIdiot 10y 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.
- gvb 10y 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-for-android-asks-users-to-stop-using-it-for-sms/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/01/google-hangouts-7-0-f...
- CaptSpify 10y 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
  - BinaryIdiot 10y 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 10y 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.android.apps.tachyon https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...
jalami 10y 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 10y ago
  vector.im looks cool, thanks for that :) Will be following it. But man, that is one hard-to-use (browser) client.
- NoGravitas 10y 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.
  - mxuribe 10y 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! ;-)
Animats 10y 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 10y 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 10y ago
  Agreed... I was looking for the magic words "uses the Signal protocol" or something along those lines.
zuxfer 10y ago
I still like google talk better. It was simpler. Elegant. And it was paradise for IM lovers.
limeyy 10y 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.
- jalami 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y ago
  Girls refuse video calls all the time because their hair isn't ready Your premise is invalied
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago
  > It's also impossible to refuse a video call My camera never works. I've never had anyone lash back against this.
- wkillerud 10y 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 10y 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.
techaddict009 10y ago
Aren't a bit late to the bot party?
subhrm 10y ago
Not in India :(
akerro 10y 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 10y ago
  Does Knock Knock offer the same possibilities as chat roulette?
aluhut 10y 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...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- kyrra 10y 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.
  - aluhut 10y 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
tdkl 10y 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 http://www.reddit.com/r/android/comments/4xxnjl/_/d6jawai
- Tobold 10y 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.
  - tdkl 10y 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.
    - spv 10y ago
      Wire also takes a similar approach. I think google is trying to mimic whatsapp here: A single device with end to end encryption so that your keys never leave the device.
- intoverflow2 10y ago
  This is pretty standard these days, mobile only and phone number authentication are what the general public are used to.
noahmbarr 10y 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 10y 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.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- T-1000 10y 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 10y ago
    Hmm that's how iPhone works.
    - T-1000 10y ago
      And that is an open standard that works with Skype, Duo and other non-apple alternatives?
- DropbearRob 10y 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.
comex 10y 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.
- ocdtrekkie 10y 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.
izacus 10y ago
Does this even work from a deskop computer or is it a mobile app only?
- DropbearRob 10y 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.
soufron 10y 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 10y ago
  How does this add any value above existing products that do the same?
  - wodenokoto 10y ago
    parent is being sarcastic.
  - camiller 10y 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.
    - pavel_lishin 10y ago
      > You don't run this through your google account, only your phone number is needed to sign up. This does not add any value if I want to have two different Duo accounts - e.g., one for personal use, and one for business use.
- JustSomeNobody 10y ago
  Don't forget the need for yet more proprietary protocols.
soufron 10y 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.
soufron 10y ago
How many similar apps do we have already? We are increasingly solving problems that dont exist.
- 0xmohit 10y ago
  > We are increasingly solving problems that dont exist. In the process, we are attempting to divert attention from unsolved real problems.
soufron 10y ago
Reading the comments... You guys know that any 3G/4G phone with a camera can make videocalls with awesome quality, right ?
- shermozle 10y ago
  For only 60c/minute and I think I've had one call where it was correctly configured kn both ends.
- pjc50 10y ago
  How? I've never seen a button for that on my phones.
- mercora 10y ago
  for some reason this seems mostly dead now. Not that it is not possible but it is not implemented in almost all phones.
- msh 10y 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 10y ago
I like that the apps name is tachyon.
abstractbeliefs 10y ago
Why would one use this when similar functionality (Hangouts video streaming) has just been killed and moved to Youtube Live?
- bogomipz 10y 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.
  - camiller 10y 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.
- jsight 10y 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 10y 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_3i4 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 10y 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 10y ago
  I have an Apps account and just installed it from the Play Store.
- robertcope 10y 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 10y ago
Guy with beard and hipster glasses - check.
mattkevan 10y 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 10y ago
Wasn't WebRTC going to solve all this (e.g. https://appr.tc https://appr.tc)? What happened, has it become browser cruft?
- lozf 10y 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 10y ago
    Notifications are possible with Service Workers.
satyajeet23 10y ago
Facetime Rival? Nope.
pinewurst 10y ago
What's in this for Google? Another source of information to collate?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
dzmien 10y 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.
- ethanbond 10y ago
  Well it wouldn't be Google with any fewer than 4 semi-competing apps in their own portfolio.
  - perseusprime11 10y 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.
    - tgb 10y ago
      That's fine for an email client, but video chat requires network effect to be useful.
      - wayzel 10y ago
        The network effect is portable when the identities are preserved across products. For example, Facebook's separating out of FB Messenger was done while preserving the already built-up network effect.
    - untog 10y ago
      But this requires you and all your friends to sign up to yet another system, with yet another account. "Try this app, at has some features that may or may not make it into Hangouts" is not a great sell for my friends.
nxc18 10y 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_googley 10y 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.
  - camiller 10y 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.
    - feelin_googley 10y ago
      It responds to a call by accepting the connection and a payload (video) before the user has decided whether to "accept" the call? "... since it is phone only for now." For now? Yikes.
- bisby 10y 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 10y ago
  Didn't you hear that desktop is dead?
anentropic 10y ago
Hope it works better than Hangouts i.e. without randomly having to reboot your laptop before it will work
- syshum 10y 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 10y 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-windows-mac-linux-chrome-os http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/3/8339197/android-apps-on-win... [2]: http://techapple.net/2014/05/5-best-android-emulators-linux-run-android-apps-linux-ubuntulinuxmintfedoraarchlinuxopensusemageiacentos-etc/ http://techapple.net/2014/05/5-best-android-emulators-linux-...
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- mderazon 10y 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.
syshum 10y ago
Not for everyone, just People on Android and ios mobile devices...
- wrsh07 10y 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-smartphones-sold-are-android-or-ios-record-slowest-growth-gartner-278605.html http://tech.firstpost.com/news-analysis/96-8-percent-new-sma... [2] http://www.statista.com/statistics/330695/number-of-smartphone-users-worldwide/ http://www.statista.com/statistics/330695/number-of-smartpho...
  - 1_2__3 10y 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.
  - syshum 10y 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 10y ago
APK is now available: http://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google-inc/duo-by-google/duo-by-google-1-0-130018012-rc1_rc29-release/ http://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google-inc/duo-by-google/duo-by...
losteverything 10y 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 10y ago
  I often use it to call my family and friend abroad. It is quite handy once you get used to it.
- eliseumds 10y ago
  People talk to their families, girl/boyfriends, team mates, interviewers and so on.
- bagacrap 10y 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 10y 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.
- camiller 10y 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.
  - rogerdpack 10y ago
    So in essence this is an attempt to be a facetime competitor?
    - camiller 10y ago
josh_carterPDX 10y 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 10y 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 10y ago
Reminds me of Microsoft. Makes a bunch of products.. nobody cares.
vorotato 10y ago
No desktop version? Why would anyone use this over hangouts?
jijji 10y ago
They are trying to do what viber has been doing for years
bfrog 10y ago
I still long for the days of a real gtalk native app
vthallam 10y 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 10y 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-focus-duo-allo/ https://www.engadget.com/2016/08/16/google-hangouts-business...
- JshWright 10y 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 10y 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/ https://www.pushbullet.com/
    - JshWright 10y ago
      Yeah, pushbullet is alright (it's what I used before switching to Fi), but direct integration with Hangouts is _so_ much cleaner. It just works everywhere, on every device.
- 10y ago
skynetv2 10y 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-more.html 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 10y 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 10y ago
Just bring back google talk and end this madness.
spullara 10y 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_happened_to_making_facetime_an_open/ https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/1xuzif/what_ever_hap...
sidcool 10y ago
I have been trying to get my phone number verified but it's not working
- mderazon 10y ago
  They block non US phones for now
  - sidcool 10y ago
    It's working now though.
shidoshi 10y 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 10y ago
Terrible name there is already a popular security auth app called Duo with a similarly named mobile app. https://duo.com/ 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 10y ago
So much for being easy. I don't have sms
atxcrab 10y 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 ?

311 points by marban 10y ago

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 10y 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-strategy-make-two-of-everything/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/10/googles-product-stra...
- simonh 10y 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.
  - erichocean 10y ago
    For a self-identified "late adopter", you sure comment early on.
    - simonh 10y ago
      I've been early adopting Google products for years, many of which sadly nolonger exist. That's the problem.
Navarr 10y 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-focus-hangouts-business-consumers-allo-duo-release/ http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/08/16/google-planning-focu...
- technofiend 10y ago
  I guess it depends on the enterprise... lots of places outright block google services: drive, e-mail, hangouts, etc.
  - ohstopitu 10y ago
    I guess they mean those that already pay for google apps.
- snaky 10y ago
  Oh, finally they want to compete with Slack. Google Talk group chat features were released in 2007.

mkj 10y ago

Is this using the same parts underneath as hangouts?

ende 10y ago

Have they announced when it will be discontinued?

crucifiction 10y ago
Late 2018
- tkubacki 10y ago
  source? ...or it's just pointless trolling ?
emsy 10y 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 10y ago
  Reputations are often earned.
- euyyn 10y ago
  So you rather Duo not exist and keep not having an app that you can use with both of your parents?
  - emsy 10y ago
    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.
    - Fuxy 10y ago
      I don't see a better app at the moment since Skype got bought by Microsoft and all the encryption got nerfed. Although I get where you're coming from. It would also be nice if all products discontinued by google would just get open sourced. They are basically saying it's useless to them so why not let somebody else give a try.

serpix 10y 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

thewhitetulip 10y ago
I think there is something called imo in which video conferencing works in 2G network
- thewhitetulip 10y ago
  Why the down vote? There actually is an app called "imo" which does both text and video chat in skew speed network
escap 10y ago
both wechat or line do video and/or audio call on iPhone/Android.
witty_username 10y ago
Some searching yielded https://appear.in/ https://appear.in/ (I'm not affiliated with that website)
- spdionis 10y ago
  Which by the way works very well for our daily meetings.
  - sealjam 10y ago
    Seconded, I've been very impressed with this service.
- lozf 10y 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.

sotojuan 10y ago

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

vincnetas 10y 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?
- yeukhon 10y 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?
- dredmorbius 10y 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.

helloworld 10y 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.

gruez 10y 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 10y ago
  > build an algorithm > adjust eye position yes, those are the hard parts
  - donpark 10y ago
    [Recent ML work on Gaze Manipulation](http://www.creativeai.net/posts/6fokKr6xuytqsnT9F/deepwarp-photorealistic-image-resynthesis-for-gaze http://www.creativeai.net/posts/6fokKr6xuytqsnT9F/deepwarp-p...) [Online interactive demo](http://sites.skoltech.ru/compvision/projects/deepwarp/ http://sites.skoltech.ru/compvision/projects/deepwarp/)
    - kyriakos 10y ago
      is it just me or the examples are just creepy ? anyway I think its a minor issue. I am more worried about if I am dressed / groomed appropriately for the video call rather than if I am having constant eye contact.
      - spacemanmatt 10y ago
        confirmed creepy. not just you.

knocte 10y ago

End-to-end encrypted but not opensource is just trusting that it's really (well)encrypted. Thanks, but no thanks.

misingnoglic 10y ago
I'll trust that Google knows what they're doing when implementing encryption.
- rplnt 10y ago
  Sure, but I also don't trust them to not harvest data from calls by side-channels for advertising purposes.
  - scrollaway 10y ago
    And if they were open sourcing it, you'd say there's no way to know they're not doing that in the compiled release. Reverse Engineering is the only viable way of determining this stuff. I'd love for it to be open source but it has nothing to do with this.
    - knocte 10y ago
      >And if they were open sourcing it, you'd say there's no way >to know they're not doing that in the compiled release. Only if they don't use deterministic builds.
- mattkevan 10y ago
  I'll probably trust them on the encryption bit, but it's less clear they know what they're doing...
- Sylos 10y 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.

sidcool 10y 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.

karma_vaccum123 10y 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?
- sidcool 10y 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.)
  - allendoerfer 10y ago
    The only break up here was Messenger, and even there they did not just continue the feature but gradually phased it out to make sure people are actually following. Messenger still uses the same network behind and did not create a separate one. Instagram and Whatsapp are just examples of how not to kill a successful product. Turns out it's quite simple: You change nothing.
    - intoverflow2 10y ago
      >Instagram and Whatsapp are just examples of how not to kill a successful product. Turns out it's quite simple: You change nothing. For a long time it seemed like the strategy was to change nothing. Now it's become clear the strategy is to be scared of changing anything, just leave it to fester and fall behind then panic and recklessly start cloning competitors features and diluting what made the service compelling in the first place.
10y ago

karma_vaccum123 10y 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 10y 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_vaccum123 10y ago
  So why can't it be fixed?
- Nullabillity 10y ago
  At least it doesn't only run on Apple devices, like the complete joke that is FaceTime.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - jsmthrowaway 10y ago
    [Here lies a substantive question that was posed to a content-free comment. Edit lasts longer than delete, so you now get to read its depressingly gray tombstone. Let's reflect together on this.]
    - izacus 10y ago
      That's a very strong defense of a piece of software that deliberately prevents you from communicating with people that haven't bought the same piece of electronics. Think on that for a moment - "Sorry grandmama, I can't send you iMessage or talk to you in person since you didn't spend your pension on an expensive Apple device." For something as fundamental as human-to-human communication, closed, single vendor, protocols and systems deserve every criticism (and yes, Google deserves it as well).

jmspring 10y ago

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

unexpected 10y 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 10y 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 10y ago

aaaaaaand it's not on the App Store

sidcool 10y ago
It's mentioned in the blog that it's going to be rolled out slowly over the next few days.
- tommygunz99 10y ago
  But there's a link. And clicking it doesn't work

HaloZero 10y 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.

euyyn 10y ago
What email stuff?

davidone_f 10y 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 :)

BinaryIdiot 10y 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.

gvb 10y 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-for-android-asks-users-to-stop-using-it-for-sms/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/01/google-hangouts-7-0-f...
CaptSpify 10y 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
- BinaryIdiot 10y 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 10y 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.android.apps.tachyon https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...

jalami 10y 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 10y ago
vector.im looks cool, thanks for that :) Will be following it. But man, that is one hard-to-use (browser) client.
NoGravitas 10y 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.
- mxuribe 10y 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! ;-)

Animats 10y 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 10y 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 10y ago
Agreed... I was looking for the magic words "uses the Signal protocol" or something along those lines.

zuxfer 10y ago

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

limeyy 10y 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.

jalami 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y ago
Girls refuse video calls all the time because their hair isn't ready Your premise is invalied
JumpCrisscross 10y ago
> It's also impossible to refuse a video call My camera never works. I've never had anyone lash back against this.
wkillerud 10y 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 10y 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.

techaddict009 10y ago

Aren't a bit late to the bot party?

subhrm 10y ago

Not in India :(

akerro 10y 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 10y ago
Does Knock Knock offer the same possibilities as chat roulette?

aluhut 10y 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...

deleted 10y ago
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kyrra 10y 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.
- aluhut 10y 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

tdkl 10y 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 http://www.reddit.com/r/android/comments/4xxnjl/_/d6jawai

Tobold 10y 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.
- tdkl 10y 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.
  - spv 10y ago
    Wire also takes a similar approach. I think google is trying to mimic whatsapp here: A single device with end to end encryption so that your keys never leave the device.
intoverflow2 10y ago
This is pretty standard these days, mobile only and phone number authentication are what the general public are used to.

noahmbarr 10y 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 10y 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.

deleted 10y ago
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T-1000 10y 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 10y ago
  Hmm that's how iPhone works.
  - T-1000 10y ago
    And that is an open standard that works with Skype, Duo and other non-apple alternatives?
DropbearRob 10y 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.

comex 10y 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.

ocdtrekkie 10y 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.

izacus 10y ago

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

DropbearRob 10y 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.

soufron 10y 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 10y ago
How does this add any value above existing products that do the same?
- wodenokoto 10y ago
  parent is being sarcastic.
- camiller 10y 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.
  - pavel_lishin 10y ago
    > You don't run this through your google account, only your phone number is needed to sign up. This does not add any value if I want to have two different Duo accounts - e.g., one for personal use, and one for business use.
JustSomeNobody 10y ago
Don't forget the need for yet more proprietary protocols.

soufron 10y 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.

soufron 10y ago

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

0xmohit 10y ago
> We are increasingly solving problems that dont exist. In the process, we are attempting to divert attention from unsolved real problems.

soufron 10y ago

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

shermozle 10y ago
For only 60c/minute and I think I've had one call where it was correctly configured kn both ends.
pjc50 10y ago
How? I've never seen a button for that on my phones.
mercora 10y ago
for some reason this seems mostly dead now. Not that it is not possible but it is not implemented in almost all phones.
msh 10y 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 10y ago

I like that the apps name is tachyon.

abstractbeliefs 10y ago

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

bogomipz 10y 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.
- camiller 10y 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.
jsight 10y 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 10y 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_3i4 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 10y 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 10y ago
I have an Apps account and just installed it from the Play Store.
robertcope 10y 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 10y ago

Guy with beard and hipster glasses - check.

mattkevan 10y 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 10y ago

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

lozf 10y 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 10y ago
  Notifications are possible with Service Workers.

satyajeet23 10y ago

Facetime Rival? Nope.

pinewurst 10y ago

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

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

dzmien 10y 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.

ethanbond 10y ago
Well it wouldn't be Google with any fewer than 4 semi-competing apps in their own portfolio.
- perseusprime11 10y 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.
  - tgb 10y ago
    That's fine for an email client, but video chat requires network effect to be useful.
    - wayzel 10y ago
      The network effect is portable when the identities are preserved across products. For example, Facebook's separating out of FB Messenger was done while preserving the already built-up network effect.
  - untog 10y ago
    But this requires you and all your friends to sign up to yet another system, with yet another account. "Try this app, at has some features that may or may not make it into Hangouts" is not a great sell for my friends.

nxc18 10y 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_googley 10y 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.
- camiller 10y 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.
  - feelin_googley 10y ago
    It responds to a call by accepting the connection and a payload (video) before the user has decided whether to "accept" the call? "... since it is phone only for now." For now? Yikes.
bisby 10y 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 10y ago
Didn't you hear that desktop is dead?

anentropic 10y ago

Hope it works better than Hangouts i.e. without randomly having to reboot your laptop before it will work

syshum 10y 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 10y 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-windows-mac-linux-chrome-os http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/3/8339197/android-apps-on-win... [2]: http://techapple.net/2014/05/5-best-android-emulators-linux-run-android-apps-linux-ubuntulinuxmintfedoraarchlinuxopensusemageiacentos-etc/ http://techapple.net/2014/05/5-best-android-emulators-linux-...
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
mderazon 10y 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.

syshum 10y ago

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

wrsh07 10y 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-smartphones-sold-are-android-or-ios-record-slowest-growth-gartner-278605.html http://tech.firstpost.com/news-analysis/96-8-percent-new-sma... [2] http://www.statista.com/statistics/330695/number-of-smartphone-users-worldwide/ http://www.statista.com/statistics/330695/number-of-smartpho...
- 1_2__3 10y 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.
- syshum 10y 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 10y ago

APK is now available: http://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google-inc/duo-by-google/duo-by-google-1-0-130018012-rc1_rc29-release/ http://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google-inc/duo-by-google/duo-by...

losteverything 10y 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 10y ago
I often use it to call my family and friend abroad. It is quite handy once you get used to it.
eliseumds 10y ago
People talk to their families, girl/boyfriends, team mates, interviewers and so on.
bagacrap 10y 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 10y 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.
camiller 10y 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.
- rogerdpack 10y ago
  So in essence this is an attempt to be a facetime competitor?
  - camiller 10y ago

josh_carterPDX 10y 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 10y 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 10y ago

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

vorotato 10y ago

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

jijji 10y ago

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

bfrog 10y ago

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

vthallam 10y 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 10y 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-focus-duo-allo/ https://www.engadget.com/2016/08/16/google-hangouts-business...
JshWright 10y 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 10y 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/ https://www.pushbullet.com/
  - JshWright 10y ago
    Yeah, pushbullet is alright (it's what I used before switching to Fi), but direct integration with Hangouts is _so_ much cleaner. It just works everywhere, on every device.
10y ago

skynetv2 10y 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-more.html 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 10y 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 10y ago

Just bring back google talk and end this madness.

spullara 10y 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_happened_to_making_facetime_an_open/ https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/1xuzif/what_ever_hap...

sidcool 10y ago

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

mderazon 10y ago
They block non US phones for now
- sidcool 10y ago
  It's working now though.

shidoshi 10y 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 10y ago

Terrible name there is already a popular security auth app called Duo with a similarly named mobile app. https://duo.com/ 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 10y ago

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

atxcrab 10y 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 ?