Google’s merger of Meet and Duo may be confusing, but it should deliver some useful upgrades in the bargain. The company has added a live sharing beta feature that lets users of the revamped Meet share Spotify and YouTube streams during chats. You can play games like Uno Mobile and Kahoot, too. The functionality will sound familiar if you’ve tried SharePlay, but you can’t use Spotify or YouTube with Apple’s media feature.
The Meet upgrades include scheduled recurring meetings, virtual backgrounds and in-meeting chats. As with the Meet features coming to Duo, live sharing has been rolling out over recent weeks. The rebranding of Duo as Meet will take place throughout August for mobile devices, and is coming later for everyone else.
Google has pitched the Meet-and-Duo union as an adaptation to the modern realities of video calls. Live sharing clearly reflects this. I’s an acknowledgment that many people use video chats as social spaces, particularly when remote hangouts are more common than they were before the pandemic.
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