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Comment by SoftTalker | Hacker News Reader

I don't know why they bother. I have never once used Google Meet, or Google Duo, or Google Hangouts. I have never heard of anyone else using them. I have never been asked to contact someone or join a meeting using one of these apps.

Google: just change the name, change the code, do whatever. Nobody will notice.

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Your bubble is not representative of reality. Google Meet may not be as popular as Zoom but it’s a strong second. It’s very popular in the business space especially, so it’s mostly used for work. I also sometimes use it with friends when I want a reliable, easy video call with screen share.

Agree.

Google Meet (the current one) is a pretty decent app. Not as good as Zoom but much better than Teams or any other alternative.

And the number of meeting requests mirrors that. First Zoom, then Meet, then Teams, and then random other things which basically barely work long enough for us to switch to Zoom.

It's so unintuitive to use for personal calls that I don't think I could ever convince one of my friends or relatives to use it. Having to create a meeting, send the link to someone, then hope they read it while I join the meeting and wait for them is so much more akward than just pressing a video call button like every other app does it.

Google Meet (original) has an excellent accessibility feature, it supports real-time computer generated captions. Duo never had that, or if it does, only recently. The only other big app that could do that back then was MS Teams which was not at all as accessible or pleasant to use as Meet.

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