Google’s Branding Comes up Short Against Zoom

How many Zoom calls do you have scheduled today?

Remote work has been a boon for Zoom, with 300 million users and counting. Brands in the business of communicating online have tried to match Zoom’s popularity with similar platforms.

Chief among them is Google, which has its sights set on video conferencing with multiple products.

Google Duo vs. Google Meet

There’s Google Duo, which includes fun features such as Family Mode and the ability to leave creative messages for friends. But there’s also Google Meet, which was initially only for business customers but now is free for anyone to use. Then there’s Google Hangouts, primarily a messaging service that also includes video calls.

If you’re confused, we don’t blame you. Google hasn’t made it easy for customers to figure out how and when they are supposed to use each product.

Strong Branding Helps Customers

Google should have a unique advantage in this space. Between search, Chrome, Gmail and Android alone, it has billions of daily users around the world. “Google” has become a verb for looking something up, yet “FaceTime” and “Zoom” are now shorthand for hopping on a video call.

That’s the challenge Google is now facing. By this point in 2020, people don’t want to learn another video conferencing tool. They’ve already learned Zoom, or Microsoft Teams or Skype.

Google’s fighting an uphill branding battle using overlapping products with confusing names. Take Google Duo — the name implies that it is supposed to be used for a call between two people. However, the maximum capacity is actually twelve participants, with plans to expand to thirty in the near future.