Google’s fast-growing video Meet tool gets a design similar to Zoom, a link from Gmail

OAKLAND, Calif .: Google will allow business and education users at Gmail.com to directly take calls on its Meet video conferencing tool starting Thursday, a new feature offered as Alphabet Inc seeks to capitalize on security and other concerns with rival services.

The Meet with e-mail integration is the first of several features to be released ahead of schedule due to an increase in demand for video conferencing, Google vice president Javier Soltero told Reuters.

Available only to schools, businesses and governments, and different from the consumer-focused Hangouts tool, Meet has added daily users faster than any other Google service since January. Millions of institutions now trust Meet due to blockages associated with the coronavirus, the company said.

Other functionalities will be added later this month, said Soltero. Meet will offer a design that displays up to 16 callers at a time, which resembles a popular option on rival Zoom that its users have compared to a grid in the opening sequence of the American television show “Brady Bunch.”

In addition, Meet will improve low-light video quality and background noise filtering, such as keyboard clicks and slamming doors.

Soltero declined to specify the growth rate of Meet users, but said a recent spike was 60 percent more users compared to the previous day.

Google announced last Thursday that Meet, which is available in a desktop browser or via mobile apps, was adding 2 million new users per day and had more than 100 million education users in 150 countries.

Google is not charging customers for updates to Meet-related features, such as large video calls, for a six-month period ending in September. The policy, which aims to win over customers in the long term, could increase pressure on Google’s earnings at a time when its ad sales business is having a major impact.

RIVAL CHALLENGES

Video chat tools from Microsoft Corp, Zoom Video Communications and Cisco Systems Inc have also reported record growth since the blockades began.

But some companies and schools later banned Zoom because of security issues it has since tried to fix, while Microsoft and Cisco services may be more challenging for new users.

Single said that Google has benefited from the rapid delivery of new features in the past month.

“I have seen time and time again clients and prospects come from other solutions who have been unable to keep up or had concerns about safety and reliability,” said Soltero, noting the jump from New York City public schools to Meet from Zoom as an example.

Last month, Google gave educators more control over who could join the calls, weeks before Zoom introduced similar features to curb a practice called “Zoombombing” in which strangers effectively hacked meetings and classes to disrupt them.

Soltero told Reuters that an upcoming meeting option will allow users to display a specific tab in their Google Chrome browser, a more granular option for screen sharing that Zoom and others provide.

Zoom has attributed some of its security issues to the unexpectedly wide use of its free version.

Google Bachelor described that not developing safeguards for free tools is “inherently wrong”.

But he acknowledged that Hangouts, Google’s free video conferencing service for non-commercial users, lacks the security and meeting control features that are available on Meet. As a result, some people in the past few weeks have used their corporate or school Meet accounts to organize non-work social gatherings.

Soltero said Google is working to simplify features across all services, “so that the products they use at work can be used at home.”

(Report by Paresh Dave; Editing by Greg Mitchell and Raju Gopalakrishnan)