This week, Google announced that it will combine Meet and Duo but promised to keep the best features of both video calling apps in the joint venture. News like this isn’t surprising anymore. The company is known for frequently launching and then ruthlessly abandoning apps and services. So much so that we have a Google Graveyard documenting every short-lived project it has undertaken.
My gut reaction, and that of many people who have found themselves stuck on the Google rollercoaster — particularly the messaging one — was to sigh in resignation. Will we really get the best of both apps? Can Google’s teams even pull off a merger like this without at least some falling by the wayside? Of course they’ll mess it up, I thought, because that’s their modus operandi.