Google’s been playing the long game with its Duo video calling service in recent months – it was only March when it proudly announced that the limit on how many people could populate a call had been raised to 12.
Now it’s trumped that, just as it said it would a number of weeks ago, by nearly tripling that capacity to a new limit of 32. The news was confirmed on Twitter by one of Google’s communications team.
1/Today one of our most requested features for Duo, group calling on the web with up to 32 people, is starting to roll out on the latest version of Chrome. pic.twitter.com/hjnL96iVcz
— Sanaz (@sanazahari) June 16, 2020
This puts Duo on a level with the numbers offered by Apple’s FaceTime, which is likely to be a key benchmark, but it’s still lagging well behind Skype’s 50-person limit, and the even bigger 100-person ceiling that Zoom supports.
Of course, there’s still arguably a little bit of confusion to be had when you consider whether most people seeking to set up a video call using Google’s services would opt for Duo or the more professionally-aimed Meet, which Google has also been revamping and pushing to the forefront of its suite in recent weeks.
In fact, our gut tells us that most would go for the latter, given that it’s now right there in their personal Gmail client’s toolbar. Still, Google clearly sees them as separate strands for now, and who are we to question that?
Regardless, users on the latest version of Chrome should find that they can use the bigger calls as of now.