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Google Meet One-ups Zoom With Free 60-Minute Meetings For Consumers (venturebeat.com) 33

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Google Meet, the video conferencing tool formerly known as Google Hangouts Meet, is arriving for consumers "over the coming weeks." Until now, Google Meet was only available to business and education users via G Suite. Anyone with a Google Account will be able to start, join, and schedule a Google Meet call for free "starting in early May." From a report: But there are some limitations: Meet video calls can have up to 100 participants and last up to 60 minutes. Google will start to enforce the time limit restriction on September 30. On Alphabet's Q1 2020 earnings call yesterday, CEO Sundar Pichai revealed that Google Meet passed 100 million daily active users (DAUs) last week and is adding "roughly" 3 million new users every day. That's still a far cry from Zoom's 300 million DAUs, but at least it's on the same order of magnitude.
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Google Meet One-ups Zoom With Free 60-Minute Meetings For Consumers More

Google Meet One-ups Zoom With Free 60-Minute Meetings For Consumers

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  • I don't like Google for its monopoly position. But Google DOES contribute a lot to this area with its WebRTC project!

    • What area? Spying? Collecting personal data? Pushing ads?

    • Which is already a bankrupt software design anti-pattern to begin with. (They could just as well use the non-web equivalent.)

      And they only do it, so others can't keep up. Especially to kill Mozilla.

      Just to be fair ...

      • I am not trying to defend Google anyway. To me it is one of the least evil things Google has done. At least Jitsi etc. did benefit from it, and more could possibly coming.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kqs ( 1038910 )

        Non-web equivalent? You mean "you need to install an application for each video service you use. If you're lucky, there exists an app for your hardware/os/service combo that has been updated this decade!" I don't think you know what "anti-pattern" means.

        WebRTC means that the browser vendors implement an open, published framework so that any service can focus on their service-level coding and not worry about capturing and displaying audio/video. Do you remember when you needed a browser plug-in for each

    • Jitsi is pretty great, back when I ran a rocketchat server I ran the jitsi plugin with it, worked like a charm.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by chrish ( 4714 )

      So what's the secret to making Jitsi not suck? We tried it with two people, and the mic echoing was so bad you could barely hear the other person. One Mac user, one Linux user, both using the latest versions of their app.

      Does hosting your own server make it better? We used Jitsi's to try it out.

      I'm planning on also checking out BigBlueButton at some point.

  • Hangouts video conferencing used to be free.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lkjlkjlkj ( 6410030 ) on Wednesday April 29, 2020 @10:19AM (#60003834)
    Google introduces hangouts video conferencing for the public for free, paywalls it, makes it free again. What's going to happen to it when the pandemic subsides? I'd rather not get invested in anything that will evaporate at a later date. And who knows, Zoom may implode later, or paywall their stuff, but with Google it's basically guaranteed.
    • It is the cost of migrating, switching, inviting everyone once Google terminates a service that makes their free services costly. Gmail has its days counted also...

      • Gmail has its days counted also...

        It does? Citation badly needed. I think Gmail getting shut down is roughly as likely as Google Web Search or Android getting shut down. Google doesn't shut down successful products with billions of users.

    • Google introduces hangouts video conferencing for the public for free, paywalls it, makes it free again.

      Google Hangouts is still free.

      Meet is Google's enterprise VC solution. There's been a publicly-announced plan for some time to make Meet available for consumers and then turn down the old Hangouts. I don't think the pandemic has changed that, though perhaps it's accelerated the timetable a bit.

      What's going to happen to it when the pandemic subsides? I'd rather not get invested in anything that will evaporate at a later date. And who knows, Zoom may implode later, or paywall their stuff, but with Google it's basically guaranteed.

      Meet is part of GSuite, which makes Google a lot of money. Approaching something like 10% of annual revenues, IIRC. Google doesn't shut down profitable business lines. As for the consumer offering... I can't se

  • If so, Zoom has some competition.

    Hangouts Meet is the better product.

    But Google may have waited too long and will just be the Sony Beta to Zoom's VHS.

  • I have no use for online meetings. Can I have the cash instead?

  • Jitsi Meet has unlimited free meetings. (Score:3)

    by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Wednesday April 29, 2020 @11:19AM (#60003970)

    And proper end-to-end encryption.
    You can run your own server too.

    What's the point of the two clients above again?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Khyber ( 864651 )

      I'm so sure Jitsi magically creates its own bandwidth for encrypted end-to-end HD video streams - oh wait you'll be paying out the ass to have that kind of bandwidth usable for even a small group conversation.

      Especially since Jitsi uses the shit method of INDIVIDUAL streams instead of a multiplexed stream where you can segment out 'windows' - boy that eats so much goddamned bandwidth, it's a wonder Camfrog still even uses such an outdated methodology of routing web video. But then they don't allow more than

  • Between Google, Facebook and Zoom I'll give Zoom the benefit of the doubt here. You have two companies that have proven they do bad things, and one company that seems to be trying at least.

  • It blows my mind how flat footed Google and Microsoft have been with this, maybe a year ago Zoom was worse than Skype for Business. Zoom now beats both companies’ offering in terms of reach and functionality.

    When our Google rep was trying to pimp Teams, they really didn’t seem to get the fact that it is SO MUCH worse than Zoom.

    Maybe in a couple weeks they can get it on-par, but today Zoom is my go-to, even if I need to re-connect or pay for more than 40 minutes.

  • Zoom doesn't currently claim to have 3e8 daily active users - rather, they now claim that they have that number of daily sessions. Not sure how many Zoom users participate in multiple sessions per day, but that's the difference. Zoom has a history of playing fast and loose with such claims, though they seem amenable to withdrawing claims when challenged or when they know that they will be subject to scrutiny.

    Meet has the advantage of not requiring or begging users to install software. That's not a small thi

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