Google is inaugurating its Google Meet videoconferencing service to anyone who needs to make use of it, as an alternative of simply providing it to enterprise and education clients through G Suite. The corporate says anyone with a Google account will now be capable of creating free conferences of as much as 100 folks that may be final any period of time — although, after September 30th, it could limit assembly size to 60 minutes.
That Google account requirement is a tough one, nevertheless. Individuals won’t be capable of simply click on a link and be a part of a gathering — they’ll be logged in. That’s so conferences may be higher managed by their hosts, hopefully eliminating the potential of Zoombombing. Google may also introduce different security measures: individuals not explicitly added to a gathering by way of a calendar invite shall be mechanically entered right into a green room after they attempt to be a part of a gathering, and solely be let in when accredited by the host. The free model will even not provide landline dial-in numbers for conferences.
These security-centered caveats are Google’s method of differentiating its Meet product from Zoom, which has had a meteoric rise over the previous few months and caught both Google and Microsoft flat-footed. The elevated consideration on Zoom revealed a litany of safety issues, which the quick-rising firm has scrambled to deal with. However, Google is seemingly hoping there’s nonetheless a gap for individuals who mistrust Zoom.
Google has belief issues of its personal with regards to conferencing and messaging merchandise. Google Meet solely became “Google Meet” earlier this month — earlier than that, the service was known as Hangouts Meet. That’s a legacy of the fractured and convoluted history of Google’s messaging and video apps; the corporate remains to be making an attempt to flee. Hangouts Chat, Google’s Slack and Teams competitor, was additionally recently renamed to Google Chat.
