Duo, the video-calling app from Google, will soon be making its way to the big screen.
Yes, that’s right, Google is bringing Duo to TV.
“The big screen isn’t just for work meetings, though: We also want to make video calling your friends and family better, too,” TJ Varghese, a Google product manager writes in a blog post announcing the new development and alluding to the recent addition of casting functionality to Meet, Google’s video conferencing app for individuals and businesses meant to give the likes of Zoom and Microsoft Teams a run for their money.
The Google Duo app will be rolling out in beta on Android TV in “the coming weeks”, according to Google.
Since Duo, like every other video-calling app out there, requires a camera in order to be able to function, something that most television sets lack, users will be able to use it by simply plugging in a camera via the USB port on their TV or media streamer for those using Android TV boxes like the NVIDIA Shield.
With there not being a universal video-calling application on Android as there is on Apple’s platforms (iOS, iPadOS and macOS) with FaceTime, many have taken Duo to be the Android platform’s FaceTime equivalent.
Meet, which Google debuted recently as it sought to wrestle some market share from the hot Zoom app that everyone ran to with the pandemic making it convenient to work, study and do business remotely in place of in-person, remains the company’s go-to app for non-person-to-person-centred calls.
However, rumours are rife that Duo will soon go the route of Google Reader and many other Google products and services that the search giant’s merciless axe has fallen on over the last decade.
