It’s only been a year since we were introduced to the Google Duo app, a free video-calling service from the tech giant. But a few weeks shy of its actual one-year mark, they have made an announcement that they have already reached the 100 million downloads milestone. However, what they failed to disclose is how many of those are still continuous, active users to this day or how many of them actually searched and “voluntarily” downloaded the app onto their mobile device.
Amit Fulay, head of Product at Google for both Duo and Allo (the messaging app counterpart), made the announcement on his Twitter account, claiming that the “high quality video with simple design” is the reason why Duo has been popular with users. He is “pleased” that in just 11 months in the market. Duo has already been downloaded 100 million times. However, no numbers have been released as to how many active users there are, which is probably more important.
High quality video with simple design is resonating with users. Pleased to see #GoogleDuo hit 100M, 11 months since launch. Lots more to do
— Amit Fulay (@amitfulay) July 15, 2017
It should be noted that just a couple of months ago in May, they announced that they reached the 50 million downloads mark. So this means that the user base has doubled in just the last two months. This may be due in part to the fact that in March, users have been able to make audio calls aside from the standard video calls through Duo. They’ve also been pre-installing Duo as part of the Google Suit of apps since December, so that may also count as actual downloads.
Hopefully, we will get usage numbers from Google as well so we can determine if Duo really is as popular as they claim. The app still confuses people since there is a separate messaging app, the aforementioned Allo, while both functions could actually be seen in Hangouts.
SOURCE: @amitfulay
