Staying locked indoors amidst COVID-19 pandemic has taught us the importance of video conferencing, as for many, this has turned to be one of the most crucial media to interact with the outside world.
These days, whether for office meetings or family gatherings, Zoom was the app that people went with, due to its simple and easy to use interface along with the ability to allow up to 100 people to connect on the call with ease.?
But lately, it was surrounded by several security concerns that forced several companies and even the Indian ministry to ask their employees to stop using it.
And since these cases have surfaced, people have become a little hesitant to use the app, while looking for alternative solutions that can perform similarly. Several players like Facebook and WhatsApp decided to increase their limits for the number of participants on a call. And now, Google has announced that it will be making Google Meet -- its premium video conferencing app free for all.
In case you didn¡¯t know, Google Meet is actually a part of G Suite and was initially known as Google Hangouts before it was rebranded.?
Google¡¯s Vice President Javier Soltero said in a blog post, ¡°We¡¯ve invested years in making Meet a secure and reliable video conferencing solution that¡¯s trusted by schools, governments, and enterprises around the world, and in recent months we¡¯ve accelerated the release of top-requested features to make it even more helpful.¡±
Soltero has also revealed that Meet's daily usage has spiked by 30x since January, with the app hosting 3 billion minutes of video meetings and adding 3 million new users every day.?
Along with the ability to have up to 250 participants, you have the ability to record conversations, along with iron-clad security barriers that require a Gmail account to sign up -- making it more secure.?
Additionally, it is a browser-based interface, so you don¡¯t need to install or download anything to make it run, all you need is Google Chrome, your Gmail account and you¡¯re sorted.
The free version does have a limit of 60 minutes per call, but this limitation will come in force starting September this year, meaning, for now, you can talk on it as much as you want. It will start rolling out to Google accounts starting May.
Would you make the switch to Google Meet? Tell us in the comments below.