Zoom may be having some privacy and security issues, Microsoft Teams is certainly gaining in popularity but both of these offer some great functionality that Google Meet does not have. Google are looking to bridge the gap with the addition of new features to their Meet app (formerly known as Hangouts Meet).
With so many people working from home the use Of Google Meet has grown immensely in the last few weeks but their features have lacked. Now many changes are coming according to an interview Google’s G Suite head Javier Soltero had with Reuters.
Paying enterprise and education customers will be able to take Meet calls on Gmail’s web client — much in the way Hangouts has been integrated for some time. This will allow video conferencing to begin from within the Gmail interface in a bid to offer more security to users.
Other functionality on the way later this month include the ability to display up to 16 participants in a call at once — much in the way Zoom shows their grid view. Users will also notice an improvement in video quality when dim lighting is present along with more filtering of background noise such as keyboard clicking and slamming of doors.
These features are normally added for a fee but until September 30 paying customers will receive these updates for free. Google are looking to entice users over to their platform for the long term and providing these features for free may just win many over.
With over two million new users per day Google Meet is fast growing in popularity and we expect it to continue to grow as Google build up its feature set. Hopefully many of these new additions will eventually trickle down to free users too.
The Grid View feature for Hangout/Meet already exists with an extension called Google Meet Grid View. This is not made by Google but it works really well. The only downside of Google Meet Grid View is that sometimes it hogs the system memory and slows the computer down. But otherwise, it is fantastic. One feature I like is that you can choose whether to show people with or without video turned on.