San Francisco, Feb 8 (IANS): Google's video calling app Duo has now surpassed the 5 billion download milestone over on the Play Store.

The US based search engine giant launched Duo at the same time as Allo, one of Google's many attempts to create a rival to iMessage and WhatsApp. Allo's time on the Play Store ended in 2019 when the app shut down and around the same time Duo managed to cross one billion installs.

Google also planned to merge Meet and Duo, but this merger collapsed late last year.

Google earlier rolled out four new features in its video calling app Google Duo, along with a promise to add more soon.

The search engine giant 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 on Duo allow users to click a photo during a video calling.

One can take a photo together to capture the moment on smartphones, tablets and Chromebooks, and share it automatically with everyone on the call. Users can do this on group calls and on more devices soon, the company said.