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Google so desperately wants people to use its video calling software that it is now offering it for free.
Starting Wednesday, Google Meet, the company’s teleconferencing app owned by Alphabet Inc., will be available at no cost. Meet is currently part of Google’s paid software package for work. People can use the service for calls with up to 100 participants. Google said it will limit the duration of free calls to 60 minutes, but won’t start applying that time limit until the end of September.
The free offer is permanent, according to Smita Hashim, Product Director at Google Meet. “It will last over time, just like Gmail,” he said. “Video conferencing has practically become an essential service.”
Science and Technology
The Cisco service recognizes who is using it, provides more information on participants, and offers options on what users want to do.
In fact, video calls are growing rapidly around the world as work and personal interactions develop online due to the confinement measures in place. Google’s offer has grown: The company reported Tuesday that more than 100 million people a day now use Meet. But it has lost ground to rivals like Zoom Video Communications Inc., which reported 300 million daily participants last week. Facebook Inc. also recently launched a free video call service.
On many occasions, Google has tried to gain a presence in the messaging segment, and most of the time it has not been successful, despite its dominance in the email and mobile phone software segments. To date, Google has offered Meet in conjunction with its G Suite service, which charges companies between $ 6 and $ 25 per user. For the first quarter, Google reported $ 2.78 billion in cloud computing revenue, but did not disclose G Suite sales.
Zoom and Google video conferencing applications have been criticized for their weak privacy and security measures, particularly in schools. Hashim said Meet is “very secure, very reliable and very easy to use,” and that it will continue to add security features.
To use the free service, the company requires people to have a Google account.
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