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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

#191

Post by libria »

grandinj wrote: post #112
grandinj wrote: post #48

I don't have the mental space to waste filling it with details of another Google communication product they are going to discontinue in a year.

Clearly other people are smarter than me. I'm not that smart, and I'm a parent, so I take quite seriously the act of choosing which stuff I need to learn to use. If you're young and smart, that probably doesn't matter, you have lots of free time to learn new things.

FWIW, I agree with your "transient product fatigue" sentiment, but had to downvote anyway because this only ever goes back and forth with defense/attack with little convergence.

I suspect only the tech crowd notices this and the general public just gobble everything up, though. We can all just think quietly "ok another experiment, no thanks" and watch where the chips fall in 6 months.

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#192

Post by lucb1e »

techntoke wrote: post #154
gchokov wrote: post #23

Another Google service that I will not use because of privacy concerns.

You can use Zoom and have them install backdoors and give your information to Facebook.

... or Wire or Jitsi or Signal or Jami or one of a dozen others. Heck, even WhatsApp and Microsoft Teams are preferable to these two.

But yeah let's single out the only alternative that's actually worse and give that as counter-example.

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#193

Post by sixothree »

e12e wrote: post #152
sixothree wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skype for business uses Win-F4 to mute. No kidding.

Pro tip: alt+f4 also mutes... ;)

Right, that's my point. Which makes me think this is really a sick joke by some disgruntled engineer.

Out of all of the 48 major keys each with 16 possible modifier key combinations, how on earth did they settle on the one keystroke within a thumbnail of closing the application.

It's not just rude. It's an F-you to the user.

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#194

Post by josefresco »

sneak wrote: post #12

> We do not allow anonymous users (i.e., without a Google Account) to join meetings created by individual accounts. Reminder: it is impossible to get a Google Account without giving your phone number (and thus permitting access your traditional identity information with it: name, street address, et c) to Google, who can then tie it to any existing Google cookies and your IP. Demanding that your communications partner…

Why would you give them your actual phone number? Doesn't everyone have multiple "burner" numbers for spammy services, just like we all have for email?

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#195

Post by numbsafari »

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…

Funny ... none of those other "competitors" seem to feel the need to have 4 different products in order to operate in this space. Each of them is expanding its reach and capabilities, coming from a place of strength.

Google is just practicing "me-too"-ism and not really trying to solve a problem except some engineer is bored and some product person thinks these tools could become a threat to ad dollars if allowed to grow "unchecked".

Google owns YouTube (which you forgot to include YouTube Hangouts On Air). Google absolutely is a video comms company.

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#196

Post by eitally »

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…

You have no idea what you're talking about (re: Meet & Duo). Duo is included in the standard Android distribution image and even included on Samsung phones. It's a broadly adopted "Facetime for Android" and works very, very well. It's not going anywhere. Meet is clearly a business-first product and a core part of the G Suite offering set. As another poster described, it goes beyond just desktop & mobile apps and contains a lot of the same kind of conference room features you'd get from a Polycom, Bluejeans, Vidyo, etc. It's also Google's internal videoconferencing standard for both rooms & end users. Your comparison with Zoom makes literally zero sense. For one thing, you can't purchase Meet by itself -- it's an entitlement within G Suite -- and if you look at the Meet announcement this week explaining availability for "all users", you should see it as a side-effect of the business product's maturity, not as a consumer-first offering.

The only remaining question marks are around what happens with classic Hangouts, and what additional features is Chat going to get that make it more consumer-oriented before it replaces Hangouts in Gmail.

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#198

Post by eitally »

pfranz wrote: post #84
kartayyar wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google products ( and other tech company products ) are discontinued when they don't take off. Meet has a 100 million daily call participants. 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.

There's also the product "treadmill" for chat and video apps that Google and Microsoft have had over the past handful of years. There is buy-in even for a chat app. I often have to shuffle browsers, may or may not have to install something, have to judge if the other person is interested in trying new software. Does everyone have a Google account? If I'm joining someone else's meeting, what's the process? Is there a…

Joining a Meet meeting is easy, just like joining a Teams meeting is easy. Both are much, much easier than Webex & Zoom, which irritate with attempts at forcing client software installation.

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#199

Post by Wowfunhappy »

> Here are just a few of our default-on safety measures:

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

So, all participants need to create Google accounts. How convenient for Google.

I don't necessarily want to ascribe maliciousness here—there are certainly user-centric reasons to set it up this way. But, isn't it interesting how many of the security measures implemented by tech companies also just happen to align with their business interests in other ways?

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#200

Post by eitally »

jedberg wrote: post #134
cameronbrown wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 th…

You don't need a Google account to join a Meet meeting. https://support.google.com/meet/answer/9303069?co=GENIE.Plat...

Re: your corporate switching experience ... this is a failure of the company culture, not a technology problem.

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