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Google wasted no time integrating its Meet videoconference into Gmail, and some users have already seen a link to start Meet in the left sidebar of the Gmail interface. Previously available only to its business and educational customers through G Suite, the company said last week that it was doing Meet for free for anyone with a Google account and allowing meetings of up to 100 people with no time limits.
Bringing Meet Meet to the fore is Google’s latest attempt to come face-to-face with Zoom, the ubiquitous video conferencing application that has so far ruled the home age. Meet will have some privacy controls that Zoom has lacked (resulting in “Zoombombing” cases). You cannot click a link to join a meeting; You will need to log in to your Google account. If the meeting host (Meet the host?) Has not invited you, they will send you to a waiting room until the host approves it. And unlike Zoom, the free version of Meet won’t have landline numbers for meetings.
Google and Microsoft are beginning to catch up with Zoom in the video conferencing space (though questions abound as to how much Zoom has really grown). Microsoft has increased its Teams app to 75 million daily active users, the company said last week during its earnings call. And Meet is adding around 3 million new users daily, according to Google, it has recently exceeded 100 million daily Meet meeting participants.
But Google has always been a bit disorganized in the video conferencing / chat department. (Remember Gchat? And Allo?) Until last month, Meet was still called Hangouts Meet, for example. And Hangouts Chat (Google’s Slack competitor) also continues to exist, even if it’s been downgraded in Gmail’s left sidebar to give Meet a better ranking. That leaves Google with Hangouts Chat, Meet, and the original Hangouts (though they will be removed soon), along with the Android Chat app and the Duo mobile video chat app.
