For Android and iOS, Google is renaming Duo as the Meet app, replete with the video calling-focused logo.

Many of Meet’s functionality have already been moved by the corporation. However, for the time being, the old Meet app will remain available under the name “Google Meet (original).”

By September, all Duo users should be able to witness the rebrand. The familiar parts (such effects and contacts) will not change, but you will need to log in with your Google account to use any meeting features. Ad hoc calling won’t be available on the original Meet app, and it will soon stop functioning.

The goal of the merger, according to a spokeswoman in June, is to provide a uniform experience that can adapt to the “changing needs” of video calling, including meetings. It also serves as a further admission that Google’s collection of communication apps had become overly complicated. For example, the tech company discontinued Allo in the beginning of 2019, and it expects to shut down Hangouts this fall to concentrate on Chat. Even if the old Meet is still around, it should soon be evident which Google apps you should use for keeping in touch with friends or scheduling meetings at work.

Both the Meet and Duo video services were developed in response to Google’s much more reliable communication rivalry. Actually developed in 2017 as “Google Hangouts Meet,” a group video chat tool for business purposes, Google Meet actually took off in 2020 when the COVID-19 epidemic caused Zoom’s growth to surge. During the early stages of the work-from-home era, Google Meet was still kept behind a paywall. While it finally became as user-friendly as Zoom, it was after Zoom became well-known.

In response to the expansion of WhatsApp, Google Duo and Google Allo were released in 2016. Two years prior, WhatsApp was the subject of a $22 billion bidding war between Google and Facebook. After losing, Google spent the following two years developing Google Allo, a WhatsApp clone. Google created a new app called Google Duo for video capability rather than incorporating it into the main app. You could utilize Google Duo video chat with Facebook’s WhatsApp or Google’s Allo at the time because WhatsApp didn’t have video chat capabilities.

The characteristics that some of the top tech businesses offer through their products and services often overlap. This is something that Google is all too familiar with, as are the necessary defenses. Some duplication was unavoidable after developing its consumer and commercial products as different projects. But the business is going back on this significant difference. The long-awaited transformation of Google Duo into Google Meet will combine all of the practical aspects of both platforms into one.

In order to save you from going on a fruitless search for Duo in your app drawer, Duo on Android and iOS will display a banner on its home screen informing you of the changes. Google has created distinct app icons, which can be seen below, to further reduce confusion. If you still see the old blue Duo icon, your app hasn’t been updated as a result of the merger. If it has, the Meet logo in many colors will be seen. Google claims that the upcoming update for the original Meet app would give it a green icon in the unlikely event that you are a Duo user who also installed it.