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 :)
Google Duo, a simple 1-to-1 video calling app
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Re: Google Duo, a simple 1-to-1 video calling app
#42I 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.
Google's communications strategy has been bafflingly dumb for years and years now. Almost my ENTIRE social network (that was on chat; this was before every part of society was "on the Internet") used to be on Gchat. That's a massive network-effects advantage that they had ages before anyone else did (including Facebook, but Facebook's network did surpass them with the ability to find someone by their face).
Almost a decade of inexplicably stupid product decisions later, they've squandered their hugely valuable lead (and then some). I can't imagine why anyone would go out of their way to use any Google product whose usefulness is at all dependent on network effects (I've completely ignored the launch of Allo and Duo and, years after everyone else, have pretty much moved to FB Messenger as my primary messaging app). This is a pretty chronic Google problem that I noticed both from the inside and outside: their engineering and design talent are incredible, but the people responsible for the product and marketing side are evidently really, really bad at what they do.
This is part of why products like GMail or Google Search do so well, and products like G+ so poorly: you could be the only person in the world using GMail and it would be just as useful (and well-designed), while the quality of products like G+ depend less on their quality _per se_ and more on network effects, which Google's product/marketing is clearly too incompetent to do well.
Re: Google Duo, a simple 1-to-1 video calling app
#43I 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.
> 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.
At least it doesn't only run on Apple devices, like the complete joke that is FaceTime.
Re: Google Duo, a simple 1-to-1 video calling app
#44On the same week that they discontinued Hangouts on Air in favor of YouTube? Why is Google always making and closing stuff?
Google culture is hiring the smartest or most motivated college grads, paying them to babysit legacy money printing systems built by the generation before them, then occasionally encouraging them to team up and clone popular services from other companies and startups. The clones get passed around the campus for dogfooding until enough interest builds up and the project goes up the chain of command until a VP (at the…
It's an unfortunate situation for Google product engineers. It's basically a competition. It has some benefit and has some really big downside. If my reference is correct, usually there are more than one team building the same product (e.g. Google Plus).
Re: Google Duo, a simple 1-to-1 video calling app
#45I 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.
Re: Google Duo, a simple 1-to-1 video calling app
#46I 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.and...
Re: Google Duo, a simple 1-to-1 video calling app
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
"The only difference seems that Duo works with phone numbers, not Google Accounts" Which is a huuuuuge difference. This is the same factor that made whatsapp so popular on the smartphone compared to all other other chat apps that were popular at the time (including google talk) but where each system was using a different account creation/login flow on that tiny screen, Whatsapp came along and had the brilliant insigh…
Yes, being tied to Google account does seem limiting, after all there are more phone numbers than Google Accounts. I have a gut feeling that one of Allo and Duo will be a success.
But there are far more Google accounts than Allo/Duo users, and an e-mail address is far more memorable than a phone number.
Re: Google Duo, a simple 1-to-1 video calling app
#48On the same week that they discontinued Hangouts on Air in favor of YouTube? Why is Google always making and closing stuff?
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?
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?
Re: Google Duo, a simple 1-to-1 video calling app
#49Sounds 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 call…
Can't they just put a camera behind the screen? Been waiting for this for over a decade
The screen would be in the way?
Re: Google Duo, a simple 1-to-1 video calling app
#50Sounds 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 call…
To be honest, I never found this to be a huge problem.
After hundreds of Skype calls with people, I just don't notice it anymore.
Sure, to fix that problem would be nice. But I don't think the engineering required to put a camera behind a screen, or creepily adjusting people's pupils in realtime, are worth it to rectify what is hardly an issue.
EDIT: also, it's a bit weird to write a critique like yours for the launch of a new platform. No one else solves this issue, so why does Google not solving it suddenly make their platform pointless?
It's like if Tesla releases the Model 3 and you're like "Uh, it doesn't fly? Pass."