Google Meet is Now FREE for all users

Zoom has another rival as Google is making Meet FREE for everyone. This is a video meeting tool that can be accessed by end-users.

Sample tile layout of a Google Meet video conference

Google Meet has new features like screen-sharing, real-time captions, and others

Starting next week, Google is launching FREE  access to Meet slowly. So, it may take weeks before everyone can use it.

For the free account users, they should limit their meeting time to 60 minutes maximum after September. To participate in a Meet call without being a paying user,  one needs a paid G Suite account to initiate outgoing calls. 

Google highlights the Meet is a safer platform, not just because it’s hard to guess meeting codes for Mee, but also because it runs in the browser. In return, this application is claimed to be less susceptible to security threats.

Aside from that, it still features screen sharing, real-time captions, and the new tiled layout as included a few days ago.

According to Smita Hashim the Director of Product Management at Google Cloud, video conferencing became essential due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Also, she also noted that some of the plans were included in the company's directions. She explained,

We are accelerating what we are doing, given the crisis, and given the need for video conferencing at this point. We still have the Google Hangouts product but Google Meet availability we are accelerating. This is a newer product designed to scale to many more participants and that has features like closed captioning and those kinds of things.

As of last week, Meet’s daily meeting participants go beyond 100 million, it now hosts up to 3 billion minutes of video meetings.  Since January, its meetings increased 30 times.

Other perks from Google for enterprises and small businesses

Additionally, Google is releasing a new version of a new edition of G Suite, called G Suite Essentials. This new version is designed for small teams and includes access to Google Drive, Docs, Sheet, Slides, and Meet.

Users can access this for FREE until September 30. After that, Google will require payment but there's no information yet about its pricing.

Google is also offering some perks for enterprise users up to September 30. These include the following features:  free access to advanced Meet features for all G Suite customers,  live stream to up to 100,000 viewers, as well as free additional Meet licenses and free G Suite Essentials for enterprise customers.

Sources: GizChina, TechCrunch