I believe video conferencing has never been so much in demand than it is now & for that, thanks to COVID-19 lockdown. From getting telemedicine prescriptions to making million dollar deals, everything is happening on video calls. Different service providers are either offering attractive plans or advanced features like increasing the number of participants in a single call.
Amid all of this, Google Inc announced plans to make Meet (video conferencing platform) free for all it’s users. It’s been good news for users, however, in the past also FREE apps have taken more than they offered to the users (privacy & security aspect).
Google Meet Video Conferencing Is Free Now
Recently, due to immense demand, Google is planning to open Meet for all the people. Initially launched by the giant as a premium based service, Google started the app for paid users only. Now, due to the COVID-19 lockdown & people working from home, the demand has risen like never before. Since the blind attempt from the public to try almost every video calling service has made them vulnerable to data privacy & security. Probably, that’s why the giant had to step in & make its video conferencing service free for everyone.
“Today, we’re making Google Meet, our premium video conferencing product, free for everyone, with availability rolling out over the coming weeks. We’ve invested years in making Meet a secure and reliable video conferencing solution that’s trusted by schools, governments and enterprises around the world, and in recent months we’ve accelerated the release of top-requested features to make it even more helpful. Starting in early May, anyone with an email address can sign up for Meet and enjoy many of the same features available to our business and education users, such as simple scheduling and screen sharing, real-time captions, and layouts that adapt to your preference, including an expanded tiled view.
It’s important that everyone who uses Meet has a secure and reliable experience from the start, so beginning next week, we’ll be gradually expanding its availability to more and more people over the following weeks. This means you might not be able to create meetings at meet.google.com right away, but you can sign up to be notified when it’s available.”
With the limit of letting 100 people present on a single call at a time, Google Meet has proved itself for security purpose as well as quality.
Put down the details to notify yourself about the premium service becoming free for you.
What Does This Mean For Google Meet Users?
Previously, users had to have either a Google Business or education account in order to make calls on Google Meet, however, now you don’t need any of that to make calls. All you need is either the Google Meet webpage or an app (Android & iOS mobile platforms) that lets you make calls without having any other supporting account.
Do you want to know how to schedule a google meet? In case you are using or used to scheduling events on Google Calendar, it will literally be a piece of cake for you to start as well as join the calls from there.
Checkout the new top-requested Google Meet Features (mentioned below) that had been rolled out by Google last week only:
- Tiled layout for larger calls
- Present higher-quality video content with audio
- Low-light mode
- Noise Cancellation
“Over the past few weeks, we’ve extended advanced Meet features to all G Suite customers so that they can get the most out of Meet. We’ve also ramped up engineering support for Meet, both to ensure we’re scaling responsibly and to bring our users four of their top-requested Meet features. These features use technologies like Google AI to improve meeting quality and user experience, and will gradually roll out to customers globally, beginning today.” – Smita Hashim,
Director of Product Management, Google Meet, Voice & Calendar
Wrapping Up
Google has rolled out the video conferencing feature Google Meet free for everyone from today. Because of the sudden & immense demand in using the video calling service across the globe due to COVID-19 pandemic, Google made it FREE instead of a premium service anymore.
Don’t forget to enroll yourself to get notified about you using the Google Meet video calling software for free.