[kumarm]

The app never exited Beta. I would think Google realized there is no $ in being second social network in its category (after nextdoor) at Google Scale. I do think it make sense for Google to shutdown the app. Spinning it off as a startup, I doubt it is a viable option considering how tied they would be with other Google internal resources.

[pmontra]

Gmail has been in beta for five years, 2004 to 2009

https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/google-apps-is-out-o...

The point here is that very few people are using Neighbourly to make it interesting to Google.

Btw, in these days I learned that Duo is still alive. I thought it was dismissed time ago. The page on Google Play says 1B+ installs and still I don't know anybody using it. I mean, nobody ever asked me to make a call using Duo. Everybody is using WhatsApp or Skype for that on mobile. So, to get to the point, very second (or probably, fourth, fifth, etc) in the rankings but not dismissed by Google. I think they value our as strategic. Neighbourly was not. They already have Maps.

[moooo99]

> Btw, in these days I learned that Duo is still alive.

Duo is great actually, me and my family use it all the time. WhatsApp video calls are pretty bad imho, they tend to show a lot of artifacts and not be very fluent in general. Duos on the other hands looks pretty good, no matter if you're on WiFi or 4G.

The biggest benefit however is the fact, that the user interface is so incredibly simple. For apps like WhatsApp video calling is just an secundary feature, for Duos its the main focus. I never had to explain anything about Duos to my parents, but they still know how to use it with me and their friends.

However, I don't feel like Google is putting a lot of effort into bringing Duos forward, so I wouldn't be surprised if they'd shut it down as well.

(Also, the high install count is probably just because some devices come with Duos preinstalled, although I don't know when its counted as an install in the PlayStore)

[1024core]

The best feature of Duo is that it is cross-platform: you can make video calls between Androids and iPhones (which you can with WhatsApp also, of course, but WhatsApp's video call quality is not that great).

[xg15]

> The point here is that very few people are using Neighbourly to make it interesting to Google.

It hast over 10 million installs apparently.