Google's shady trick to increase Duo usage revealed

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Last week, Zoom announced that it has surpassed 300 million daily meeting participants. In response to that, Google recently announced that over 10 million new people are signing up for Duo every week. In many countries, call minutes on Google Duo have increased by more than ten-fold.

In order to increase the usage of its services, we already know that Google uses some shady tricks. Today, a new trick used by Google to promote Duo was revealed. When you message someone with the word ‘Zoom’ using the Android Messages app, Google will automatically place “Start video call” button on the bottom of the message. Basically, Google scans all your messages to prompt you about its Duo service at the appropriate time.

Google Messages app is one of the most popular messaging apps on Android with over 500 million downloads. Google pushing Duo using the Messages app also raises questions about its monopoly abuse. It will be interesting to see the reaction from Zoom regarding this shady behavior from Google.

via: TheDigitalHacker

More about the topics: Duo, google, Google Duo, video calling