Google Getting Serious About Duo Video Chat

It’s hard to get too invested in new products from Google. The company has built a reputation for developing interesting and useful projects, only to abandon them when they cannot commercialise them or lose interest. So, when they released Duo last year I didn’t really bother with it too much. But they seem to be getting serious about Duo – their video calling challenger to Skype and FaceTime.

Duo is still limited to one-to-one chats, unlike Skype and FaceTime. But that’s probably good enough for most people.

They are adding some new features to optimise the Duo experience – at least in the US where they are negotiating with carriers to take advantage of ViLITE where it is available.

I use FaceTime a lot – several times per week – for contacting friends and family while I’m travelling or to catch up with family who live overseas. And it offers a vastly better experience over dodgy connections that I experience with Skype. But I’m going to shift to Duo for a few weeks as having a single, multi-platform app like Duo that offers performance that’s at least as good as FaceTime would be a winner for me.

Have you been using Duo? What has your experience been like? Have you compared it to FaceTime and Skype?


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