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by ocdtrekkie 3073 days ago
Having a lot of installs isn't successful when you illegally[1] require everyone to preinstall it on all of their phones. They have 100 million installs because they've sold 100 million phones since then. Does anyone actually use it? Has anyone voluntarily installed it on their phone because they wanted it?

"Google announced that, starting December 1, 2016, Google Duo replaced Hangouts within the suite of Google apps Android phone makers must pre-install on devices"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Duo

[1] Yes, illegally. Russia has already outlawed this behavior and fined them for it, the EU is expected to levy a fine against Google for it that makes their previous record-breaking fine look small, and it's a blatant violation of US antitrust law, where Google has paid a significant number of politicians to avoid being sued for it.

1 comments

Does anyone actually use it?

It has more than one million five star reviews, so yes.

By the way, while I'd say Google has been definitively abusing its control of the market with Android, I don't think Duo is a good example; I expect a phone to come with a way to make calls, and nowadays I'd include video calls too. Rather than preventing Duo from being preinstalled, the EU should force the industry to come up with a decent open video call protocol.