With more and more people spending more and more time at home, Google Duo wants to ensure that it remains competitive among the best video chat apps for keeping people connected. To that end, Google announced that Duo will roll out four new features, including an increase in the maximum group size for video calls.

Google Duo was already a popular video calling app, especially on Android devices (also available on iOS). In a blog post, Google boasted that Duo is growing even more. In many countries, call minutes have increased more than tenfold. You may be one of the millions of people who have recently learned how to use Google Duo.

But Google Duo needs to evolve to keep up with Zoom and Skype. The first new feature to be released is the ability to take a snapshot of the participants in the current call side-by-side. This is done through Duo Moments, so that setting needs to be enabled. Composite snapshots are not the same as screenshots taken on a cell phone.

And next week, Duo will introduce new video codec technology to improve call quality and reliability even at low bandwidth. After that, Google Duo will upgrade its messaging system. Soon, it will add an option to automatically save messages instead of letting them expire after 24 hours.

Finally, there is a new feature where Google Duo will again increase the group size for video calls. It recently increased the number of callers from 8 to 12. And now it will be expanded from 12 to an undetermined number of people. According to Google, the service has increased group calls eightfold. Forget Zoom Happy Hour, it's time for a Google Duo party.

With everyone at home and subject to quarantine regulations, video calling apps and video conferencing services are experiencing a huge surge in demand. Many apps are rolling out improvements and upgrades to attract these new users. WhatsApp's recent beta release doubled the maximum number of people on a video call; Google Meet added one of Zoom's best features: a gallery view. In addition, Zoom's privacy and security issues are being addressed by the company.