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Comment by loosescrews | Hacker News Reader

I think Google Duo and WhatsApp are the competitors to Facetime. Zoom is more of a competitor in the video conferencing space along with Google Meet, Skype for Business and Cisco WebEx. Regular Skype is more of a competitor in the all-in-one consumer messaging space along with Google Hangouts.

Unfortunately all are proprietary and it was the previous generation, iChat and Google Talk, that were based on the open XMPP standard.

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Is Google Duo much of a competitor? Hangouts is circling the drain, Allo is dead, and everyone I know is confused by Duo, including Google employees. If you made a list of the ways Google employees made video calls to each other outside work, I’d be suprised if Duo were in the top three.

What is confusing about Duo? It's a phone-number-based video caller. It's one of the simpler messaging apps that Google has made.

Duo: A simple app with a confusing name, released four years ago to compete with another app that Google made that did the same thing but more, and released as a matched set with a different app which also had a confusing name but is now discontinued. Forgive me if I’m getting old and can’t keep up with this shit. I make video calls through four different apps depending on who I’m talking to, and I just can’t be bothered to deal with Google’s constantly-changing messaging landscape.

I know people who are still angry about the Messenger app being split off from Facebook, but that’s nothing compared to the dumpster fire that is Google’s messaging app landscape. So if I want to make a video call to one of my Google employee friends it’s not going to be through Duo because it seems like they don’t have time for this shit either.

Who knows, maybe Duo will take off?

Has it not taken off? It holds the #5 spot in "Social Networking" in Apple's app store, where it must compete with Facetime. I've been using it to talk to my mother for 4 years. She certainly doesn't care about Google's past messaging blunders; she just likes that it works.

I don't really think Duo would be the best option for Google employees to video chat with each other. They'd use Hangouts, because they all already know each others' G Suite accounts.

It seems to have taken off already :

> That's the case for many people these days–in fact, every week, over 10 million new people are signing up for Duo, and in many countries, call minutes have increased by more than ten-fold. https://www.blog.google/products/duo/4-new-google-duo-featur....

Disclaimer : Google employee but work far away from duo but use it daily with family and friends.

I wouldn't call that "taking off", especially in a time when I'm sure every other communication platform is seeing massive growth as well.

Genuinely surprised by this, because I have circles in WhatsApp, FB Messenger, Snapchat, Signal and iMessage, but I don't know a single person who uses Duo.

Perhaps a geographical thing and it's only popular in a couple of countries?

I think Duo is here to stay. Google is even tightening the integration of Duo with the Android dialer, while at the same time doing things like dramatically improving group calls and integrating it with Google Home devices.

> I think Duo is here to stay.

I'm going to bookmark this comment for the inevitable sunsetting blog post three years from now. :)

Duo is great comparing to others, and for cross-platform group calls. I do use it when I need to call on Android devices.

But Facetime is still superior on iOS and MacOs. When it comes to calls in apple ecosystem - it is a no-brainer.

Would have agreed pre-covid but post-covid it's clear than Zoom is actually a great system for social calls too and the distinction between business orientated video chat and social isn't as harsh as it seemed.

I'm from a big social drinking country and our Friday bar visits are now just a link we can share into a group chat and people can drop in as they please, you can share things from your screen and it all just works great.

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