Google announced last week that it is making its Google Meet, its video meeting app for businesses that compete directly with Zoom, available free of charge to anyone with a Google Account. Until now, you could take part in a Meet call without being a paying user. However, you needed a paid G Suite account to start a call.
Nonetheless, users would need a Google account to participate in meetings, which is not likely to be a significant barrier for most people but adds more complexity than just clicking on a Zoom button.
Google says it will enforce a 60-minute per call limit on Google Meet's free tier conference calls post-September 30 when the free tier limit ends. The only real restriction is that meetings can't have more than 100 attendees, whereas enterprise users can add up to 250 users in a call. You would still get screen sharing, real-time captions and the company introduced the new tiled layout just a few days ago.
Google claims that you get a safer platform in exchange, not only because Meet's meeting codes are difficult to guess, but also because Meet runs on the browser and is thus less vulnerable to security attacks.
Google is also adding a few perks for business users through September 30. These include free access for all G Suite customers to advanced Meet features, including the ability to live stream up to 100,000 viewers within their domains, as well as free additional Meet licenses without the need for an amended contract, and free G Suite Essentials for business customers.
Google Meet has become a common approach for video conferencing, attracting about 30 lakh users daily. The site, previously known as Google Hangouts Meet, was initially popular among large-scale organizations, corporate clients, and institutions such as schools.
In addition to the latest announcement from Meet, the Google executive also spoke about some of the features that made Google Meet recently. Google has rolled out four new features for its video conferencing app to give you a quick refresher. Firstly, on Meet it introduced tiled format support. That would allow users on their screens to see up to 16 participants. Additionally, the company also introduced support for low-light mode and a new feature on Meet for noise cancellation. Finally, on its video conferencing platform, the company introduced a Chrome Tab feature that would enable users to share high-quality audio and video content during a meeting.
Google is also launching a new edition of the G Suite, dubbed G Suite Essentials, in addition to free access to Google Meet for all. This new edition, intended for small teams with access to Google Drive, Docs, Sheet, Slides and, of course, Meet, will be available free of charge until September 30. Google will start charging after that, but the firm has not yet decided on pricing.
Considering the recent increase in demand for video conferencing applications, as well as the rapid growth of competitors such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams, this move has been taken by Google to ensure that it will not slip behind rivals that provide their services for free and who have a payment model.
