The ‘Google Meet (original)’ app is mercifully no more

Abner Li | Oct 16 2024 - 12:44 pm PT

Google Meet is currently upgrading the personal video calling experience and as part of this the “original” app has stopped working.

Despite the Google Meet brand winning out in 2022, the “Google Duo” app had many more installs (5 billion vs. 500 million as of today). As such, the Google Duo app was turned into Meet and is what continues to get new features: play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.tachyon.

However, Google had to keep around the original Meet app, which was originally “Hangouts Meet” and then became “Meet” after that legacy brand was dropped, that it told enterprise customers to download.

The icon became green and “(original)” was appended to the app name. For the past two years, the app kept working for code or link-based meetings, and even took priority in intercepting links.

When we attempted to join a call via a meet.google.com URL today, we got this “You can’t use this version of the Meet app anymore” screen. You’re directed to the new app, which offers “new features like reactions and the ability to call other Meet users directly,” and to delete the old one.

New users today can no longer access: play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.meetings.

Google is currently adding features that it first introduced for enterprise customers to the personal version of Meet. This includes an updated UI, an audio-only on-the-go mode, live captions, and more expressive features.