Google Hangouts Meet, the company’s business focused video calling app, is now called Google Meet. As use of video conferencing services booms in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and million more people working form home, Google has taken the opportunity to ditch the ‘Hangouts’ brand from another one of its products.
Google famously rebrands or kills messaging services all the time. Hangouts could – should – have been an iMessage for Android equivalent had Google not butchered the brand, hacking it up for personal and business apps and also not making it a very good product.
The name change was confirmed in a blog post on the product’s security that doesn’t even mention the Hangouts brand but instead calls the service Google Meet. Google has since confirmed to Android Police that the Hangouts Meet branding has been retired. The company would not confirm if the Hangouts Chat brand would be scrapped, though.
The publication also pointed out that all the service’s support pages are now Google Meet branded, but notes the Android app is still called Hangouts Meet for now. This will be changed. Typically messy from Google!
Google will almost certainly have moved to rebrand in order to better compete with collaboration and conferencing apps like Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Slack. It’s a little unbelievable that the company hasn’t nailed the corporate calling space considering its resources.
Author: Henry Burrell, Phones Editor
Henry is Tech Advisor’s Phones Editor, ensuring he and the team covers and reviews every smartphone worth knowing about for readers and viewers all over the world. He spends a lot of time moving between different handsets and shouting at WhatsApp to support multiple devices at once.