Google Meet

In August of 2020, 9to5Google reported that Google was planning to replace Duo with Meet. This development was finally made official today – and will see the app that the vast majority of Android users have installed on their devices get renamed to Google Meet later this year.

For Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Google is previewing new features across several products covering Android and Workspace, including alt-text in Gmail.

Similar to last year, Google Workspace has a presence at I/O 2022 and used it to announce features across Meet and Chat, as well as Docs.

As announced at the end of last month, Google Meet is now built into Docs, Sheets, and Slides with a prominent new button that’s rolling out from today.

When G Suite was rebranded to Google Workspace in 2020, the company teased that Meet was coming to Docs, Sheets, and Slides. That Google Meet integration is now coming along with desktop web Picture-in-Picture (PiP), in-call reactions and more.

Recent reporting suggested that Google Duo would soon be gaining a handful of features to match Google Meet, but our research suggests otherwise.

Back in June, Google previewed a second screen experience for video conferencing. Google Meet’s Companion Mode is now beginning to roll out “when joining a meeting using Google Meet hardware or the Nest Hub Max.”

Back in 2019, Google introduced real-time video call transcriptions and has since added support for more languages. The next step sees Google Meet beta test live translated captions. 

Google is rolling out a trio of productivity updates to its iPhone and iPad productivity apps. Notably, Gmail will get a homescreen widget, while iOS Picture-in-Picture is now available for Google Meet.

We broke the news last year that Google was eventually going to replace Duo by making Meet its only video calling service. That remains the case, but the resulting product will be primarily focused on enterprise and is no longer internally pitched to be a merger of the two apps, as Google has no plans to create a dedicated consumer-oriented video offering.

Back in September, Google previewed how Chat will let you make one-on-one Meet calls without having to use URLs. Similar to classic Hangouts, this feature is now rolling out in the version of Google Chat inside Gmail.

One way of making the endless torrent of personal and work video calls more palatable is by setting unique backgrounds. Google Meet on the web is introducing new “immersive backgrounds” that attempt to give your surroundings some life.

Cloud Next is Google Cloud’s annual conference for enterprise customers and developers, and this year’s virtual edition is kicking off later today at 9 a.m. PT. Google Workspace announcements at Cloud Next ‘21 are primarily centered on security.

Back in October, Google introduced default and custom wallpapers for Meet. Google Meet is now rolling out video backgrounds that are first coming to the web. 

While text chatting with classic Hangouts is still possible today, Google has killed most of the legacy service’s video calling features. Google will soon restore a familiar capability that lets you make direct calls using Meet without having to generate a link ahead of time.

The occasional echo on video calls is unavoidable, and Google Meet already works to “intelligently” control audio to remove it. Google will now notify you when you’re causing the echo and provide tips on how to stop it.

Google is rolling out a handful of new features for Meet that focus on improving safety and security. Namely, the ability to have co-hosts in Meet calls is coming to more Google Workspace users.