Google Duo brought back (sort of) because its transition to Meet is too confusing

Google’s plan to integrate its calling services into Meet (finally) was supposed to make things simpler and more straightforward. It was supposed to bring some logic and order to a company that’s always overthought and confusing these things – to a really impressive degree. Earlier this month, the company He renamed the Duo video chat app to Meet Meet features are brought. That left the original Meet app that will be phased out as the new “Meet (Original)”. It also made for a great headline all the time.

But apparently, not all customers were happy with the sudden change in Duo’s identity. With the latest update of Meet for Android, Google . has repeat The original Duo icon and name as a separate shortcut appear in the app launcher. Clicking on Duo will open Google Meet. So now you have two ways to access the same app.

The Google Tell 9to5Google And the robot life They purposely took this step so that users could turn on Meet by searching for “Duo,” just as they did before rebranding it. But the fact that this was necessary again suggests that the company has lost the thread of strategy around these services.

The Duo shortcut can be useful for making the transition easier, but it also opens the door to more confusion — especially when Google itself tells everyone to “search for the Meet name and icon as your only app for video calls and meetings.” That’s not exactly the case anymore, is it now? We are back to two icons and two names for the same app. And if you open the multitasking view after launching Meet via the Duo shortcut, you’ll see a Duo icon at the top like:

Screenshot by Chris Welch/The Verge

Great job everyone. There are no notes. Someday we’ll end up with just MessagesAnd the google chatAnd Google Meet after all that — unfortunately, without the clean and simple FaceTime alternative that Duo was previously — but the road there is quite complicated.

I’m really glad it’s Friday.