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Show HN: Beesy – Record Google Meets for free, download locally

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Re: Show HN: Beesy – Record Google Meets for free, download locally

#31
post #3

Looks neat. Just a reminder for folks that some states (like California) are Two Party Consent states, meaning it is a crime to record the call unless all parties consent to it.

It's also illegal to record the expression of consent to start recording!

Re: Show HN: Beesy – Record Google Meets for free, download locally

#32
post #21

I'm not in startup world or in San Francisco so I gotta ask: is Google Meet popular with y'all? I'm on video calls pretty much all day every day and I'm mostly on Zoom or Teams, and I attend more WebEx meetings than Google Meet.

I'm out of the midwest and work in a customer facing role and this is what I see out here:

In the last ~year I've noticed what seemed to be like a wave of everyone going to Zoom really slowed or in some sectors reversed. There seemed to be a period where it seemed every O365 shop was getting Zoom to do meetings. Lately though I've seen more switch back to using Teams (which admittedly isn't as horrendous for larger calls anymore) as the first choice but not necessarily getting rid of Zoom completely. To be honest the larger the place the more likely they have more solutions.

Meet (and Google Workspace in general) remains a powerhouse in the education space but larger traditional enterprise seems to have problems staying with it when they make the switch often flipping back fully or sometimes mixing it by department. Can't say much about smaller enterprise beyond generally they go with bundled solutions if they are tech or office focused (e.g. Google or Microsoft) or whatever is cheapest otherwise.

I still run into a few Webex calls but really I haven't seen 1/10th as many of these as I used to by ratio. It's basically in the "other" category at this point with things like RingCentral and GoToMeeting.

Re: Show HN: Beesy – Record Google Meets for free, download locally

#33

I'm genuinely curious of Google will allow this to stay up, seeing as saving Meet recordings is a feature that belongs to the paid tier of Meet (Workspace). Not that they'd probably justify a takedown with that, but more that it could be used to record meeting participants without their consent. Which is actually a big deal -- all videoconferencing software I'm aware of puts up a big notice and indicator that you are…

Yeah surely we'll be adding disclaimers, thanks.

But I'm curious why hasn't google banned other chrome extensions that record google meets and all of them are either paid or free with some limitations, so we're not the only ones bypassing premium gsuite.

Re: Show HN: Beesy – Record Google Meets for free, download locally

#34

Are you using the local storage of the browser, then letting the user download from there? Otherwise it would still be loading up to some cloud. Personally, I use: https://www.read.ai/ Records the meetings, provides searchable transcripts, meeting summaries work pretty well, interactions, etc. The key difference is it joins as a bot, so I don't have to think about it. However, it does require the files are stored in…

It uses browser blob storage to store the recording.

We also plan to add these searchable transcript, summaries and other features but depends on if this stays up :)

Re: Show HN: Beesy – Record Google Meets for free, download locally

#35
post #11

How likely is google to break this if it gets popular? They could easily override `chrome.tabCapture.capture` or some other function that you depend on once the Meet page is loaded.

Yeah can totally happen, and we'll be pretty sad but this started as a fun project so it'd be pretty cool that google changes their api because of us.

Also I'll be doing some research on similar extensions on why they are not banned.

Re: Show HN: Beesy – Record Google Meets for free, download locally

#38
post #25
post #21

I'm not in startup world or in San Francisco so I gotta ask: is Google Meet popular with y'all? I'm on video calls pretty much all day every day and I'm mostly on Zoom or Teams, and I attend more WebEx meetings than Google Meet.

Yes, because it’s free and easy to manage as part of Google Apps. It works well most of the time, although lacks a few of Zoom’s bells and whistles.

Google Meets has some other bells and whistles that I don't think Zoom has comparable features for though, particularly companion mode. Being able to join a Google Meet on one device (like a phone) and join on another device for screen sharing was something I found myself doing quite often when attending online meetings and having a "Tfirst class citizen" method for that was awesome.

Re: Show HN: Beesy – Record Google Meets for free, download locally

#39
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, because it’s free and easy to manage as part of Google Apps. It works well most of the time, although lacks a few of Zoom’s bells and whistles.

Google Meets has some other bells and whistles that I don't think Zoom has comparable features for though, particularly companion mode. Being able to join a Google Meet on one device (like a phone) and join on another device for screen sharing was something I found myself doing quite often when attending online meetings and having a "Tfirst class citizen" method for that was awesome.

Zoom allows for the same thing: connecting via both phone and another device for screen sharing.
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