Google Hangouts paid features is now FREE for those working remotely

As businesses and schools are still affected by the pandemic COVID-19, Google is giving free access to its advanced Hangouts Meet video-conferencing features until July 1.

G Suite members can use the paid features until July 1, 2020

For staying connected and productive

More professionals are working from home and educators are having difficulties in updating their students as the COVID-19 spreads. According to Google, students, and teachers in Hong Kong and Vietnam are utilizing Hangouts Meet and other tools due to closure if universities.

In a blog post, Google made an announcement that they want to do their part in making employees, educators and students connected even during the spread of Coronavirus. It added,

We're committed to supporting our users and customers during this challenging time and are continuing to scale our infrastructure to support greater Hangouts Meet demand, ensuring streamlined, reliable access to the service throughout this period.

Analysts claimed that cloud software tools that help people stay connected could actually benefit from increased usage. 

Google's G Suite has a set of productivity tools, and one of them is Hangouts Meet. This has an academic version and enterprise version for big companies. The features of these two versions will be for free up to the said date.

With the premium features, users can communicate up to 250 participants per call. Live-streaming with up to 100,000 viewers within a domain is also possible. Aside from that, they can record meetings and save them to Google Drive.

Google Hangouts' competitor Zoom also extended its time limits on its free product for Chinese users. Zoom CEO Eric Yuan stated in a blog post that he wanted to help those who are deeply impacted by the virus as it continues to disrupt daily affairs, from offices to classrooms.

When the Coronavirus began, Zoom is said to have a notable increase in usage, as new users emerged according to CNBC.

Are you excited to try the premium services of Google Hangouts Meet?

Again, Stay safe!

Source: Business Insider