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Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

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Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#151

Post by TeMPOraL »

cameronbrown wrote: post #141
TeMPOraL wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but "loyal user" is in the same box as "target audience" and all the other terms in the marketing vernacular. This is a language of people taking advantage of others, talking about their victims. It makes little sense to use such language voluntarily on yourself.

Marketing speak is mostly drivel to me, but you'll have a hard time convincing most people that the language is somehow oppressive.

It's not oppressive, it's objectifying; it treats you as a resource to be exploited with little to no consideration to your well-being. No reason to voluntarily use it on yourself.

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#153

Post by fulafel »

darrmit wrote: post #146
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…

Hangouts used to be a single product that combined video, voice, direct, and group chats. It was quite good, especially with Google Voice layered in. Google split that in to Meet (video/voice) and Chat (direct/group) in a half-hearted effort to compete with Slack and Microsoft Teams. You could also say they split it further via Google Voice, which became a standalone paid offering. The issue is they still haven't sol…

Hangouts still exists and is popular, it's not a past product.

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#155

Post by kaishiro »

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…

How much innovation do we really need in this space. My primary request would be for higher fidelity - what do you feel is missing?

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#156

Post by crazygringo »

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…

It has extremely valid market reasons.

Google Hangouts = the original chat+video product which was semi-popular, but never got huge traction and mindshare the way WhatsApp, Slack, the original Skype, or the newer FaceTime did. And now Zoom and Teams.

So Google realized it had to compete better against all of those, all of those being very separate communications channels with different priorities. Hangouts could never be an awesome focused product if it had to be all things to all people.

So the competitor to Facetime/WhatsApp/FB Messenger is Google Duo. It's originally phone-based and designed primarily for 1-1, though it supports small groups.

The competitor to Zoom and Teams is Google Meet. It's enterprise-based for huge meetings.

The competitor to Slack is Google Chat.

And Google Hangouts is this zombie product that used to do everything, but never as well as any of the competitors, and still has moderate consumer usage so they can't kill it, though I'm sure they're doing their best to figure out how to get people to migrate eventually without losing them to a competitor in the process.

So despite all the flak Google gets for a fragmented messaging ecosystem, it's driven by extremely valid market reasons.

And Google isn't a video communications platform, it's a company. With several platforms, serving several totally distinct markets.

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#157

Post by ProZsolt »

benhurmarcel wrote: post #135
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.

You are right if you only consider individual users on their laptops, but companies also have to set up conference rooms with compatible equipment.

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#158

Post by koolba »

> We do not allow anonymous users (i.e., without a Google Account) to join meetings created by individual accounts.

Is it considered acceptable use to create a throwaway Google account specific for this service?

It’s be nice to have a video chat platform not controlled by China for the common man but I wouldn’t want my personal social activity on it to be directly linked to any real Google account.

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#159

Post by pilsetnieks »

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.

I recall there being an option in settings where you can limit the send quality of the video.

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#160

Post by subhobroto »

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…

Google Hangouts, Google Chat: Products that worked real well, had a lot of 3rd party integrations built for it and now deprecated because Google does not want to deal with legacy services. Their incentive structure there is to build the "next thing". Both were pretty "groundbreaking" apps when they came out. Hangouts managed to figure out and resolve a lot of issues of team chats and voice/video streaming issues over poor/unreliable connections. A lot of the novel UI and features they developed is now taken for granted.

Google Meet: An attempt at Zoom. Will soon be deprecated because Google does not want to deal with legacy services and the incentive structure there is to build the "next thing". Maybe Google Conference. Meanwhile Zoom is laser focused.

Google Duo: An attempt at Whatsapp with a whiff of FaceTime. Will soon be deprecated because Google does not want to deal with legacy services and the incentive structure there is to build the "next thing". Maybe Google Trio. Meanwhile Whatsapp, FaceTime are laser focused.

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