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

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#161

Post by ProZsolt » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 12:58 PM UTC

mr_gibbins wrote: post #55

They're late to the party. The canapes have been consumed, the beer has been drunk and everyone's down to that miscellaneous yellow dip and the leftover breadsticks. Zoom has won, Google, with Teams coming in a respectable 2nd place. No-one's got any reason to use your product.

Yes, Zoom won this battle, as Slack had won the first battle for chat, but they have to stay ahead of everyone else. Every company has Google or Microsoft suite for e-mail and for office stuff. If Zoom and Slack don't stay significantly better, the beancounters will happily cut them out, because Meet and Teams are "free".

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#162

Post by anon102010 » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 1:01 PM UTC

subhobroto wrote: post #160

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…

What's up does chat / does duo? We use zoom at work despite being on Google - meet really doesn't always work across even Google account tyoes. Ie Gmail vs gsuite vs some admin left some setting off for an external users domain and they cannot join.

Zoom I can host a no account conference that everyone can join (waiting rooms driving us all crazy)

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#163

Post by reustle » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 1:06 PM UTC

I use Meet many times per day for business and I'm very ready to move to something else. I am constantly hit with the issue where a user clicks the "ask to join" button, but the hosts nor anyone else ever sees a pop-up to admit them into the room. Super frustrating when on a phone call with a client trying to get Meet to work.

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#164

Post by aikinai » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 1:07 PM 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.

Do you meet people in person?

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#165

Post by darrmit » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 1:10 PM UTC

fulafel wrote: post #153

darrmit wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> that feature keeps the legacy version running I think

I'm well aware that Hangouts still exists.. I use it often. But Google has every intention of deprecating it.

Example: https://9to5google.com/2018/12/02/google-hangouts-shutting-d...

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#166

Post by drdec » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 1:13 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #127

TeMPOraL wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "finicky to get to connect because everyone has to remember their password" Speaking of that, my last experience with Google Meet in business setting was this: every other meeting someone from our team would disappear in the middle of a call and reappear a minute later. Reason? Google's bullshit random "you need to re-verify yourself and type in your password NOW NOW NOW!" prompt that logs you out until you comply.…

Can someone from the gaia team change the default cookie validity period down by 20 minutes (ie. from 30 days to 29 days, 23 hours, 40 minutes) to resolve this issue?

I'd suggest changing it by a 12 hour delta. Then you are likely to start encountering it at the beginning of your day instead of in the middle of anything.

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#167

Post by AzzieElbab » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 1:13 PM UTC

Can't wait to install another app that does the same thing as 99 other apps on my phone. I mean, it good for everyone, right? A hundred apps with same functionality that I need to run simultaneously because people are using all of them, that should do something for higher end phones

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#168

Post by untog » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 1:14 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #156

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 neve…

[edit: deleted. Appear to have been rate limited by HN so I can't reply? so withdrawing from the conversation]

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#169

Post by erichurkman » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 1:15 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #156

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 neve…

Google is trying to kill off classic Hangouts, starting with G Suite and then later consumers. This was started in early 2019 [0] but late last year they shifted timelines.

[0] https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2019/01/upcoming-hangou...

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#170

Post by aloukissas » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 1:16 PM UTC

Google Meet is fine, but it's lacking a native app on desktop. Google being Google, my bet is that they'll never make one, and that's a pity. Some prefer not installing apps, but many like this separation. Think zoom, slack, teams, etc.