For the past several years, group calling has been limited to Android and iOS. Previously, user limit from 12 and now its 32 people into a single group call. Back in March, the limit was originally eight calls, but Google raised it to meet video conferencing demands related to COVID-19.
“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,” tweeted Sanaz Ahari, Google’s senior director of product and design.
The tiled UI online for this rounds the corners of every window, while putting portrait and landscape boxes side by side. Google has already shown off a similar Android UI where there’s a six-person square grid up top and a carousel of faces below that you can scroll through.
At 32 participants, Google Duo is now on par with Apple’s FaceTime, but still less than Skype’s 50 people limit and Zoom which allows as many as 100 users (500 if used with the ‘Large Meeting’ add on).
The search engine giant has rolled out a new video codec technology to improve video call quality and reliability, even on very low-bandwidth connections.
The second feature that Google released was the ability on Duo to click a photo during a video calling.
Google is also adding a feature that will now automatically save video and voice messages that previously expired after 24 hours.
Users can send personalised video and voice messages when they can’t call. Google now lets its users say “I miss you” or “I’m thinking of you” using one of its Augmented Reality (AR) effects.