The problem is that I want such an app to exist (and thrive), but that history taught me not to get my hopes up when it comes to Google products. Chances are they will fail to gain a significant userbase and/or the product (better yet project) will be discontinued.
My thought exactly - the timing is really great in a way.
- Skype gets worse with every release (especially Mac & Linux) and the call quality is still stuck in somewhere 2008
- Facetime is cool but still Apple Ecosystem only
- Phone messengers (WhatsApp et al.) aren't really serious on the topic
Real-time video is plain hard, especially when latency comes into play. Having Google tackling this with their unique technology (QUIC / lots of low-level performance expertise) and resources (GCP / CDN), I'm really looking forward to try it out.
> They are basically saying it's useless to them so why not let somebody else give a try.
Their standard reason is that most products use tons of internal API calls/private modules and it would take a lot of hours to replace those with code they're willing to release.
"better app" can just be an app with less features, that's more buggy, that's going to be around in ten years. Mom and dad don't need to go learning a new app every couple of years.
Video chat has been around since forever. Having a major player like Google wade into the fray, destroy all the small fry, then bail out (as it has done many times before)? Not good for the market.
Skype was launched in 2003, and IIRC was primarily voice for the first couple of years. That brings us up to the 10 years that's apparently the required expected longevity to even consider an app.
Whatever small fry exists on the market, they have survived the Skype juggernaut, FaceTime, Google Hangouts and Facebook chat. I find it highly unlikely that Google Duo is going to be a uniquely destructive force.
