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Google Meet rolls out multi-device adaptive audio merging

workspaceupdates.googleblog.com

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Re: Google Meet rolls out multi-device adaptive audio merging

#21

Post by nradov »

nevir wrote: post #5

Meet, to me, is the perfect balance of functionality and simplicity (as an end user). And features like this only make that more apparent. Zoom and Teams always frustrate me, even though they're what I use far more often. It's too bad that video conferencing is largely a game of who has the most boxes checked - IT admins and A/V folk are the ones that need to be convinced, and Meet just doesn't ...meet... their needs

This isn't an area where simplicity wins. Zoom is targeted more towards professional use whereas Meet is more for casual or social use. It doesn't really support multiple displays, like I can't watch screen sharing on one display while moving the chat and video windows off to another display. Scaling options for screen sharing are inadequate and it doesn't even support real full screen display. Meet lacks advanced audio options that make it unusable for things like music lessons. Zoom has more third party integrations available.

Re: Google Meet rolls out multi-device adaptive audio merging

#22

Post by aniviacat »

echelon wrote: post #6

Meet and Google Docs are perfect Google products. I'm disapponted when people send me Zoom meetings or want to meet on Slack. Google Meet is a 10x better experience.

Is it possible to use Google Meet without telling Google your phone number?

I know that it's possible to use Zoom and Teams anonymously. But for Google Meet, I assume providing a (verified) phone number is required.

Re: Google Meet rolls out multi-device adaptive audio merging

#24

Post by indymike »

I just exited my startup and now work for a much bigger company. I'm going from a Google-based productivity stack to a Microsoft one, and so far Teams is the worst and best change. Google Meet was fantastic for "just working" especially for less sophisticated meeting guests. The only time Meet didn't work is when corporate IT departments at customers actively blocked Meet so their minions used the "approved meeting solution".

As far as Teams vs. Meet, it seems like Teams is great when you are working with people that have climbed it's learning curve. Teams is also filled with UX paths where it takes one or two extra clicks (and thoughts) to do simple things like share a file.

Re: Google Meet rolls out multi-device adaptive audio merging

#25

Post by rav »

Meet is nice and nicer than Teams and Zoom in my opinion, but for 1-on-1 pair programming I think Facebook Messenger actually has the best experience - when you're on the same screen resolution, the screen sharing is 100% zoom (unlike Meet which has padding around the edges), and you can move seamlessly between mobile and desktop (i.e. answer a video call on mobile, the other party sets up screen sharing, and you go to a laptop to continue the call). Too bad I'm not automatically Facebook friends with all my co-workers!

Re: Google Meet rolls out multi-device adaptive audio merging

#26

Post by pachico »

GitLab offers a nice course about transitioning to remote work. One of the items in their guidelines about online meeting is not having hybrid meetings. This is, all those attending must attend from their own device rather than the meeting room one (see Jabra) precisely for the reasons this feature tries to address.

Re: Google Meet rolls out multi-device adaptive audio merging

#27

Post by rav »

aniviacat wrote: post #22
echelon wrote: post #6

Meet and Google Docs are perfect Google products. I'm disapponted when people send me Zoom meetings or want to meet on Slack. Google Meet is a 10x better experience.

Is it possible to use Google Meet without telling Google your phone number? I know that it's possible to use Zoom and Teams anonymously. But for Google Meet, I assume providing a (verified) phone number is required.

You can use it with just a personal Google account - does that require a phone number? Alternatively, someone with a Google account can create a meeting (https://meet.new) and send you the link, which you can join without any Google account at all.

Re: Google Meet rolls out multi-device adaptive audio merging

#28

Post by toast0 »

jpalomaki wrote: post #19
simonbarker87 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like Zoom does the best job of the corporate offerings. Google Meet feels like the worst and most stifling. I was talking to someone who specialises in corporate communication at a conference last week and she confirmed my feeling above as well. Her thing is “talking over each other is a key part of human interaction and forcing one at a time is stifling and unnatural”

Might be also related to the delay in communications. There's the time the packets traverse the networks, but also delays due to buffering to accommodate poor connections.

Total audio delay is from record buffering, sampling (typically 20 ms samples), encoding, packetization (1-5 samples per packet), time in transit, decode, jitter buffer, playout buffer.

You could reduce sample size, and send fewer samples per packet to reduce total delay, but overhead goes way up (overhead is near 50% at 20ms samples, one per packet). In theory, you should be able to do something nice for people doing audio and video by including audio on the video packets, but it's not simple, so I think most conferences don't do it.

Re: Google Meet rolls out multi-device adaptive audio merging

#29

Post by smt88 »

trustno2 wrote: post #18
madisp wrote: post #15

Sadly this is feature-gated behind Gemini :/ > Available for Google Workspace customers with the Gemini Enterprise, Gemini Business, Gemini Education, Gemini Education Premium, and the AI Meetings and Messaging add-on.

I'm not that deep into Google latest rebrand activity... how is Google Meet related to LLM model? or do they call many unrelated things Gemini?

It's not related to Gemini. I suspect they're putting non-LLM stuff behind the Gemini paywall to make Gemini look more profitable than it is. Like most LLM rollouts, it could maybe become cashflow-positive, but it will likely never be profitable because of the many billions it takes to compete with OpenAI and Meta.
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