Google is sparing no effort to compete with Zoom, Skype and all other popular video conferencing platforms. The tech giant announced Wednesday in a blog post that its video calling platform – Google Meet – will now be free for everyone around the world. The free service will be available in the coming weeks. To help people around the world fight the ongoing pandemic, Google is making Meet free for free until September 30, 2020.
Google has revealed that since January, daily use of Meet has increased 30-fold. Since this month, Meet has hosted 3 billion minutes of video conferencing and added about 3 million new users every day. The company also confirms that last week the participants in the daily meeting of the Meet exceeded 100 million.
Some of the services that the company is providing free of charge due to the COVID-19 pandemic are – free access to advanced Meet features for all G Suite customers, free additional Meet licenses for existing G Suite customers without any changes to their current contract, and G Suite Essentials free for businesses.
Google Meet is free for everyone
Google announced that at the beginning of May anyone with an email address could subscribe to Meet and make video calls and try out all the features, such as simple scheduling and screen sharing, captions and layouts in real time. free.
Commenting on the new initiative, Google said: “Starting next week, we will gradually expand the availability of Meet to more and more people in the coming weeks. This means that you may not be able to create meetings. .. On meet.google.com immediately, but you can subscribe to be notified when it is available. “
Until now, Google Meet was part of G Suite, but in the future it will be accessible for free to everyone on the web at meet.google.com and also via mobile applications for iOS or Android. Most importantly, if you are a Gmail or Google Calendar user, you can start or join a Meet meeting very easily.
How to use the free Google Meet account
To start a meeting, simply use your Google account. You can connect to meet.google.com by entering your email ID. However, people who don’t have a Google account can easily create one for free. Free calls to Google Meet will be limited to 60 minutes, but Google has said it won’t apply the “deadline” until after September 30, possibly due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Additionally, Google announced G Suite Essentials for groups within an organization. G Suite Essentials offers some of the advanced features of Meet, such as phone numbers, larger meetings, and meeting recording. It also includes Google Drive, documents, spreadsheets, and presentations for real-time content creation and team collaboration while working remotely from home. However, Google has announced that it will provide G Suite Essentials for free until September 30.
Google takes security seriously
With this growth comes great responsibility, and therefore, Google takes the privacy and security of its users very seriously. For Meet, Google provides a robust set of host controls, such as the ability to admit or deny entry to a meeting, and to mute or remove participants, if necessary. Meet also does not allow anonymous users to join meetings created by individual accounts. Meet meeting codes are complex by default and this keeps hackers away from the meeting room.
Encryption is important, and therefore Video Meet meetings are encrypted in transit, and all recordings stored on Google Drive are encrypted in transit and at rest. Meet users do not require plugins to use the platform on the web. It works fully in Chrome and other modern browsers, making it less vulnerable to security threats.
