The icon for Duolingo has been updated to show a portrait of a sick owl. It looks so disgusting that I have stopped using the app on my primary phone, so as to avoid constantly seeing it in my Recent Apps list. But unfortunately, I think it is quite apt. I wonder if Duolingo employees have designed this as a cry for help, or a warning to leave the sinking ship. I am more surprised that it has been approved for rolling out to the masses.
Unfortunately, the picture describes how I feel things have turned out for Duolingo. It has gone into decline after the founders sold it.
The feature where Duolingo stood head and shoulder above the competition was the number of different available languages, both as native languages and target languages. After suddenly shutting down the Incubator, there are no new languages, those that were under development are not released, and those that were in beta are not completed. Instead, the new investors had chosen to focus on a couple of large Western languages (Spanish, French, and to some degree German, as far as I can see) – fewer than even their competitors. So far the other languages are kept running, but I am not sure how long even free money can keep them going.
Another early victim of the sale was the forums, which not only added to the enjoyment of learning a new language, but also provided valuable advice. Grammar lessons seem to also have fallen by the wayside. I fear that Duo is not only sick, but in terminal decline. It seems that the program will die without having achieved its goal. This is quite tragic. But at least it has been a long and slow decline, allowing us to make use of the work that was done before the creators sold out.