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

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#211

Post by meristem » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 2:56 PM UTC

schnevets wrote: post #175

crazygringo wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

And they brand everything as a "tool for everyone" so no one can tell if they are the intended demographic until after they install the app or do an hour of research. I would love to see how a branding team continues to justify this "Google $generic_word" branding model to the brass at Alphabet. People were unlikely to make "Hangout" a verb like "Zoom", and they definitely won't do that with "Meet". The only thing th…

Slack is ripe for the picking--same capabilities with a better UI, giving better value? I am amazed no one has eaten them alive yet.

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#212

Post by marcinzm » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 3:04 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #67

crazysim wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They definitely saw Zoom crushin' in an internal call. Hilarious. https://9to5google.com/2020/04/25/google-meet-zoom-competiti...

Wow, that must have been embarrassing. Also, from the article: > In some cases, though, many are just wondering how this service hardly anyone had heard of became so popular. Yeah, the first time I've heard of Zoom was when it landed on HN frontpage for doing some shady stuff on MacOS. Fast forward few months, my wife is asking me if I heard of it, because she'll have to start using it... I was similarly blindsided b…

Zoom has been popular for corporate meetings for a while now and I've seen multiple companies use it pre-covid. So when you had to find a video conferencing solution ASAP you we more likely to go with the one you used successfully with a client 2 months back. Zoom was less bad overall than the competitors at the time.

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#213

Post by cdolan » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 3:06 PM UTC

meristem wrote: post #211

schnevets wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they brand everything as a "tool for everyone" so no one can tell if they are the intended demographic until after they install the app or do an hour of research. I would love to see how a branding team continues to justify this "Google $generic_word" branding model to the brass at Alphabet. People were unlikely to make "Hangout" a verb like "Zoom", and they definitely won't do that with "Meet". The only thing th…

Slack is ripe for the picking--same capabilities with a better UI, giving better value? I am amazed no one has eaten them alive yet.

Discord did a complete R&D (rob and duplicate) of Slack and focused on video game communities. It’s doing very well from what I can tell!

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#214

Post by schnevets » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 3:22 PM UTC

meristem wrote: post #211

schnevets wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they brand everything as a "tool for everyone" so no one can tell if they are the intended demographic until after they install the app or do an hour of research. I would love to see how a branding team continues to justify this "Google $generic_word" branding model to the brass at Alphabet. People were unlikely to make "Hangout" a verb like "Zoom", and they definitely won't do that with "Meet". The only thing th…

Slack is ripe for the picking--same capabilities with a better UI, giving better value? I am amazed no one has eaten them alive yet.

You would think Microsoft Teams would beat them, but they inflated it with Office 365 "Features". In comparison, Slack feels more like a complete product the first time you use it. Any other must-haves for your organization are treated as add-ons.

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#215

Post by CydeWeys » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 3:36 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…

> 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".

No way. Google Meet is how basically all meetings within Google happen, and is widely used by large G Suite enterprise customers. Create a calendar entry at work and you get a corresponding Google Meet meeting by default. It has integration with stand-alone videoconferencing units too, so the list of meetings for the given unit shows up on that unit and one tap and you're in the right meeting for the current time.

It's not going anywhere.

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#216

Post by Traster » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 3:37 PM UTC

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.

When I've got a calendar full of meetings and they all have meeting links in them then yes, migrating away is going to be a pain- and that's assuming that they just EOL the product, and don't do what they've traditionally done which is to try and force you into one of their other crappy products. I still remember when every youtuber got forced into Google+. Youtube is per video! How bad could it be! Turns out, pretty bad.

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#217

Post by robertony » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 3:38 PM UTC

eitally wrote: post #198

pfranz wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not really... You have to log out of one account, then login to the other; but then you need to use 2fa; but now 2fa is mad about something and making you jump through hoops while people are getting angry you aren't showing up as scheduled...

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#218

Post by CydeWeys » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 3:40 PM UTC

fraencko wrote: post #41

I use meet professionally on a daily basis as my company is a GApps for business customer and most people I talked to are pretty satisfied. Sound, connection and video quality is very good, far better than Slack in my opinion. We had meetings with more than 100 paticipants. Integration in Google Calendar is also a big plus. One pretty minor thing that bothers me is that the webcam and mic mute toggles and the hang up…

> One pretty minor thing that bothers me is that the webcam and mic mute toggles and the hang up button are blended in and out on moving the mouse cursor during a call. I'd prefer to at least have the option to let the toggles stay onscreen as I tend to use the mute mic toggle a lot during a meeting.

Could not agree more. Also, the shortcuts to mute audio and video are multiple key combinations and differ across platforms (i.e. using the command button on MacOS and Ctrl on other OSes). Why can't they be a single key, like M to mute/unmute audio and C for the camera? Heck, maybe even use spacebar for mute/unmute since it's that key of a feature?

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#219

Post by crazysim » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 3:41 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #97

TeMPOraL wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that must have been embarrassing. Also, from the article: > In some cases, though, many are just wondering how this service hardly anyone had heard of became so popular. Yeah, the first time I've heard of Zoom was when it landed on HN frontpage for doing some shady stuff on MacOS. Fast forward few months, my wife is asking me if I heard of it, because she'll have to start using it... I was similarly blindsided b…

> or maybe I'm just older and don't pay attention anymore. It's that. People make fun of me when tell them I like to talk to teens about technology. Why, they ask. Why? Because I learn about all these new upcoming platforms. I ask them "how do you get music now", "how do you share photos", "what do you use instead of Facebook". And I learn about Snap, TikTok, Instagram, etc. long before they are popular. These platfo…

Remember the creepy VPN stuff marketed at teens that Facebook was doing? They really wanted to see what platforms teens were connecting to and engaging with!

Re: Google Meet premium video meetings–free for everyone

#220

Post by CydeWeys » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 3:47 PM UTC

robertony wrote: post #217

eitally wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not really... You have to log out of one account, then login to the other; but then you need to use 2fa; but now 2fa is mad about something and making you jump through hoops while people are getting angry you aren't showing up as scheduled...

It sounds like you aren't taking advantage of browser profiles properly. I have two Google accounts, one personal and one for work, and they live in two separate Chrome profiles, both of which are always open. On MacOS the shortcut for switching between the two windows (when both are open) is command-`