Seriously why are Google video calls SO confusing and why do they change every year?

Google video engineers gotta justify that promo to Senior Staff

I honestly 100% feel like this is the main justification for all changes happening with Google products. I swear to god Google Photos changes the entire layout every year for no reason whatsoever. Whatever they change it to isn't better, just different. But the entire website has to be remodelled and your users have to learn the entire website again because.....someone on the UI team has to justify their 6 digit salary?

The transition from Google Play Music to YouTube Music has been insane. They rebuilt apps seemingly from the ground up, only without a bunch of features. Meanwhile the actual product has, at best, stood still for about two years now. Meanwhile Spotify are running rings around them.

RIP google play music. They had the _best_ recommendations - my suggested new releases would often include a fantastic album by a band I’d never heard of. Since switching to Spotify, i get suggestions for new music by artists I already know I like, but I haven’t found any new artists I love in the same way.

I miss what for the same reason

Spotify has atrocious quality, their apps frequently are unresponsive and crash or won't play music often. Just about everyone I know who uses it complains about it from time to time. I haven't tried YT music so I can't compare, just saying.

I have both and really have no issues, just saying. Spotify has the crazy advantage of being on literally every device I own, my car has a Spotify app built-in directly into the dash which makes it crazy convenient, I also have it directly on my TV, on my speaker.....they have built an ecosystem and the ecosystem works great(in my case).

One complaint I have about them is that shuffle is broken. Completely broken. And I know they explained multiple times that it's not, that people are imagining things, but I just don't believe that - it's impossible that in a playlist with 300 songs I keep hearing the same 5 songs over and over and over again!

I have Youtube Music (through Premium) and it's still annoying. Especially when it decides some cover version on Youtube is "for Kids" and then refuses to play in the background. Which is one of the few features actually essential for a music player.

Are they though? I'm actually curious since I don't know the numbers but wouldn't use Spotify if you paid me. I've got nothing against the app, but YouTube Premium gets me ad-free youtube everywhere including casting devices as well as a solid music streaming app. If it weren't for the value of the bundle I'd likely not care as much though.

> If it weren't for the value of the bundle I'd likely not care as much though.

Surely being paid to use Spotify would represent even better value.

I’m the same. While I get ad-free YouTube into the bargain I’m not going to switch away. But friends of mine love the highlights, smart playlist stuff Spotify has (to be honest I don’t know the full details). Not to mention that Spotify has an entire API people make apps with, not having that has left me on the outside of some stuff before now.

Google Meet is a pretty solid solution and I have never had a problem with it, been using it for years.

Years? https://mobilesyrup.com/2020/04/08/google-meet-rebrand/

Google rebrands or changes entire apps at a whim. I’m shocked they haven’t ruined Google Apps (Workspace) with their changes.

Yes, it was originally named "Hangouts Meet", and was renamed about a year ago to remove "Hangouts" from the name. It's still the same app, though.

On the subject of hangouts, I miss Hangouts Dialer which was killed earlier this year. Used it to call international phone numbers.

Do you use it in Chrome? I have tried chrome and Firefox but they both make my fans spin for one video stream and four audio streams. Zoom's native app OTOH seems to handle multiple video streams with ease. This is on macOS.

Google apps use VP9 for video, and Apple didn't expose VP9 decoding acceleration via Video Toolbox up until Big Sur (on models capable doing so, so for Intel chips Kaby Lake and newer). So if you don't run Big Sur on KBL+, it falls back to software.

Duo is solid, extremely simple, and not going anywhere. But, yeah, it's been a mess.

>and not going anywhere

What is this certainty based on? Google's history shows the exact opposite likelihood.

Duo is pretty easy for the old folks on i-devices, in my experience. It's pretty much Google's FaceTime, and isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

I think it's actually a bit nicer than FaceTime.

I have only ever heard about Duo on HN. Nobody I know uses it, people outside the US use WhatsApp or Facebook and people inside the US use FaceTime.

Even Hangouts which is abandonware is better promoted than Duo and takes a prominent place in the Gmail UI along with Meet.

>isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

You say this like Google doesn't have a history of product ADHD where they create new products and cancel them within months. On top of that, they create multiple products for the same functions which means that people get confused about what's appropriate for a situation and what's not. At one point, Google had 3 different video solutions all active at the same time and none of them worked with the others.

I thought duo was canceled. Haven’t heard of it once in all of the pandemic.

Google Duo (the FaceTime competitor afaik) works fine and I have used it with all my family for a while now.

There's also WhatsApp video which is pretty poor quality, imo. Duo is much clearer and higher quality.

the web interface works pretty nicely as well. I've been using google messages and duo lately and they have been working pretty flawlessly

I’m sure it does - the technical aspects of Google’s products are fantastic. But I’ve been burned enough times now and I just assume anything interesting and new that Google makes will be rebranded / deleted / shunted into a new department in a few years for no reason. Google duo? What about Allo? Is that gchat? Is it related to hangouts? Or was that just a Google plus thing? Does that even still exist? Is duo it related to Meet? It’s all such a mess.

When Inbox came out I thought “huh this is great. I’d better not get used to it or I’ll be sad when it inevitably gets shut down in a few years”. And sure enough. I dread the family conversations in a few years of “wait where did the icon go?”

The Gmail app pretty much turned into Inbox. I was dreading the shutdown of Inbox but it ended up being a complete non-event.

I totally agree. I also don't usually trust google to support their 'projects' in long term, but since messages and duo seem to be pre installed in android devices (I think?) I was inclined to try it out. Just hoping that messages and duo are here to stay

One can understand scepticism, but Duo isn't going anywhere. If you need a FaceTime replacement, just use Duo and put all the rest of that mess out of your mind.

> One can understand scepticism, but Duo isn't going anywhere

"In August 2020, it was reported that Google was planning to eventually replace Google Duo with Google Meet, but would continue to support Duo and "invest in building new features" in the long term"

https://9to5google.com/2020/08/14/sources-google-meet-replac...

How do you know this? I don't know anyone using it so I've honestly been assuming it's the next to go. I've been using Meet with all my groups as it feels like a corporate solution and thus maybe more stable.

yes. i love it. i can share screen, cast to tv (on samsung devices etc). potrait mode, virtual background, blurr..its all there!