Google announced two new apps this year during their developer conference this year, which are designed to take on incumbents in video calling and chat: Duo and Allo. The best way to describe Duo is a cross-platform version of Apple’s FaceTime.
The pitch behind Duo is that it’s simple and works on both Android and iOS, even with slow connections. In an interview with Nick Fox, a “secondary motive” for Duo is to entice iPhone users to switch to Android.
Duo is boasting a feature called Knock Knock, “which lets you see live video of your caller before you answer, giving you a sense of what they’re up to and why they want to chat.”
Duo is replacing Google Hangouts for consumers. Originally, Duo was supposed to be the successor to Google Talk and GChat, but Hangouts will become a B2B enterprise-focused product.
But, the downside of Duo s that it’s meant to be a one-to-one call platform, where as Hangouts can host group calling. Because fo this, Google won’t be completely shuttering Hangouts.