Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#131

Post by bigiain » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 11:34 AM UTC

wanderingstan wrote: post #120

montroser wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We used Meet for a little while at work while looking for alternatives to zoom. The prospect of pouring more of our data into Google's coffers didn't sit well (and anyway audio quality was also sub par). Two fantastic "indie" alternatives for video conferencing at work: https://whereby.com and https://team.video

We’ve also been impressed with Jitsi.

Same.

And it's improving pretty much weekly lately.

And you can host it yourself very very easily.

I'm a _big_ Jitsi fan.

(They've got an experimental P2P E2E encrypted trial running too, which will be pretty cool when it's rolled out across all browsers and mobile...)

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#132

Post by Fiahil » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 11:38 AM UTC

alec wrote: post #75

I work for Google, but not on anything related to Meet. I'm most excited about this because the video/audio quality is much higher. When I use Zoom with friends, everyone is usually 320x240, or maybe 640x480 if there's only one person. Doom was 320x240 in 1993. In Google Meet, I usually see people at 1280x920. A 4k monitor will fit 6 people at that resolution. I value this higher resolution because it makes me feel m…

I'm not really excited that every meeting participant will be able to see my facial flaws in 4k HDR with dynamic surround.

The tech is not interesting, the UX is less interesting than Zoom or webex. The first hangout version was far more exciting than Google Meet, Duo or Latest-Hangouts.

Like every other industry, Google lost its ability to push boundaries forward and act as a beacon for innovation. "Higher resolution" is definitively not innovation.

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#133

Post by bigiain » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 11:41 AM UTC

booi wrote: post #32

travbrack wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meet supports up to 100 participants. That would be pretty tough to do e2ee. Is there a service that can do that?

even just e2e for 1:1 meetings would be great

This is new/experimental/not-ready-for-prime-time-yet, but publicly available and works:

https://jitsi.org/blog/e2ee/

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#134

Post by jedberg » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 11:44 AM UTC

cameronbrown wrote: post #117

jedberg wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And really with video conferencing product, I don't get the whole trope of "but they might discontinue it." - the utility is immediate in terms of the calls that you make with it, and time boxed till by when a call ends. Not true at all. I have a bunch of recurring meetings in my calendar, and each one has a Zoom link in it. If I wanted to switch to Meet, I'd have to redo each of those invites with a new link, and…

> Not true at all. I have a bunch of recurring meetings in my calendar, and each one has a Zoom link in it. If I wanted to switch to Meet, I'd have to redo each of those invites with a new link, and then hope everyone noticed the update. If you use Google Calendar, I believe a Meet link is automatically added by default. > They won't, so I'll spend the first few weeks individually pinging people reminding them of the…

> If you use Google Calendar, I believe a Meet link is automatically added by default.

For a new event, yes. For an existing event, I'd have to replace the existing Zoom link.

> That doesn't make sense. Meet is done exclusively through the web browser.

You're assuming the person I want to meet with already has a Google account.

> What stops you from having both so you can try both? Those Zoom links aren't obsolete the moment you add a Meet link.

Because of the confusion I mentioned before. You'll end up with some people in the old meeting and some in the new.

I speak all of this from experience of being in a corporate environment that moved from WebEx to Hangouts. It took weeks to get everyone to switch over and was a ton of work updating all the recurring meetings.

But the overall point is that the switching cost is much higher than just the time boxed meeting.

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#135

Post by benhurmarcel » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 11:49 AM UTC

Traster wrote: post #125

This is great, did they list the financial commitments they made to keeping this product running for a minimum of 10 years? Because I don't see why anyone would migrate to a Google product. If you start using Zoom today, you've got a fair expectation that it will be around for a while. If you start using Microsoft Teams you can be extremely confident it'll be around for heat death of the universe. If you start using…

Meet isn't a type of product that takes effort to migrate from. It's per meeting.

Also, it's part of G Suite that they sell to companies, so it shouldn't be discontinued anytime soon. For free for consumer however, nothing guaranteed.

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#136

Post by heyoni » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 11:51 AM UTC

Traster wrote: post #125

This is great, did they list the financial commitments they made to keeping this product running for a minimum of 10 years? Because I don't see why anyone would migrate to a Google product. If you start using Zoom today, you've got a fair expectation that it will be around for a while. If you start using Microsoft Teams you can be extremely confident it'll be around for heat death of the universe. If you start using…

It’s free though. Not sure what you’re shielding yourself from.

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#137

Post by corobo » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 11:51 AM UTC

gregdoesit wrote: post #115

Can someone tell me the difference between Google Meet, Google Hangouts, Google Duo and Google Chat? Multiple of these support video and chat. I’ve used Hangouts and Chat and Duo before. Why the new brand “Meet”? And why have competing - even more importantly - confusing products at Google who seem to offer the same features? I would like to, but cannot be bullish on Google as a video communications platform for this…

Honestly I'm convinced the only real difference is the people on the teams within Google

Left hand doesn't know what the right is doing and that, will probably lead to splitting the audience and everything being killed off

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#138

Post by lnanek2 » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 11:52 AM UTC

gregdoesit wrote: post #115

Can someone tell me the difference between Google Meet, Google Hangouts, Google Duo and Google Chat? Multiple of these support video and chat. I’ve used Hangouts and Chat and Duo before. Why the new brand “Meet”? And why have competing - even more importantly - confusing products at Google who seem to offer the same features? I would like to, but cannot be bullish on Google as a video communications platform for this…

We use Meet at work. As far as I can tell, it's just Hangouts, but with a lot of stuff removed like the good chat integration that Hangouts previously had. I think they rebranded it B2B to try to kill it off to not compete with their new Duo and whatever else consumer offerings no one likes.

Bet they are kicking themselves now that Zoom ate their lunch in the pandemic. If they hadn't killed their consumer offering, they would have been well placed like Zoom was for a massive traffic boost. Bet whoever wrote Duo to replace Hangouts got a promo, though!

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#139

Post by corobo » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 11:55 AM UTC

Google's just realised it's been asleep at the wheel eh? Used to be they'd fart out an internet changing mail service on a whim, now they pivot about as fast as an aircraft carrier in treacle.

Better luck next once in a lifetime pandemic, big G

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#140

Post by IshKebab » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 11:55 AM UTC

Fiahil wrote: post #132

alec wrote: post #75

I work for Google, but not on anything related to Meet. I'm most excited about this because the video/audio quality is much higher. When I use Zoom with friends, everyone is usually 320x240, or maybe 640x480 if there's only one person. Doom was 320x240 in 1993. In Google Meet, I usually see people at 1280x920. A 4k monitor will fit 6 people at that resolution. I value this higher resolution because it makes me feel m…

I'm not really excited that every meeting participant will be able to see my facial flaws in 4k HDR with dynamic surround. The tech is not interesting, the UX is less interesting than Zoom or webex. The first hangout version was far more exciting than Google Meet, Duo or Latest-Hangouts. Like every other industry, Google lost its ability to push boundaries forward and act as a beacon for innovation. "Higher resolutio…

> I'm not really excited that every meeting participant will be able to see my facial flaws in 4k HDR with dynamic surround.

Then you are a fool because high quality audio and video is not just a "nice to have" in video conferencing. It makes the difference between a phone-like conversation where you can just talk, and "I.. sorry.. after you. Ok so I was g.. no go on - what were you going to say? Sorry can you repeat that I can't hear you?"

That said, Zoom has been much better quality than Hangouts when I tried it. Do Meet and Duo use the same tech or does Google really have three different video conferencing systems?