Google updates its Duo video chat app with support for iPads and Android tablets, two years after launching the service
Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge :
Context & Ripple Effects
Duo launched in 2016 as a deliberately narrow product — one-on-one HD video calling on phones, per Google's original announcement — and its first two years were spent deepening that phone-only base: quality overhauls in version 5, then calling Android contacts who never installed the app. Tablet support arriving now reads as Google admitting the phone-first bet left screens on the table.
The timing matters because the competitive frame was shifting: within a year Google would add eight-person group calling, and by 2022 Duo's app would become the technical foundation for the merged Meet brand — making this tablet expansion an early step in Duo growing from a novelty dialer into Google's mainline video client.
First-order effects
- iPad and Android tablet owners can finally run Duo natively at full-screen instead of a stretched phone layout, removing the main reason tablet households defaulted to FaceTime or Skype.
Second-order effects
- A bigger canvas makes multi-person calls practical on Duo, pressuring Google to follow with group features — which it did within months via the eight-person group calling rollout.
Third-order effects
- If Duo keeps absorbing form factors and features, it consolidates Google's scattered video efforts onto one codebase — the path that ended with Duo's app being repurposed as the Meet foundation.
The trend: Video-calling apps are expanding from phone-first novelties into full-screen, multi-device platforms, with device coverage becoming table stakes before brand consolidation.