241–250 of 255 posts
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Google still asked for a phone number Asks for , certainly. Requires was the claim. Google asks me a dozen times a day to enable Location Services. Yeah, right.
I'm not sure when the last time you checked was, but I cannot currently create new Google Accounts without providing a phone number. It is required.
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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…
So? Google wants to make more money than they do. What's wrong with that?
Also what's wrong with "me-too"-ism? Pepsi exists even though Coca-Cola is fine. Verizon exists even though AT&T works. What you call "me-too"-ism, I just call capitalism and healthy competition.
Google's strategy has nothing to do with ad dollars or anyone being "bored" and everything to do with making money in a different market.
You're basically arguing that Google shouldn't build more products to try to make more money? But that's not how public corporations work. Making money is their whole point.
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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.
When Firefox transitioned their plugin format they dropped support for over a year (after receiving more than a year of deprecation warning). At the time it require a separate installed plugin (which defeats most of the purpose of integrating with the browser). Safari support has also been spotty.
I really hate Google's account system. I don't even use Google, but find myself juggling 4 or 5 accounts for work, school, family. If I go to `classroom.google.com` I get a "Verify it's you ". I'm expected to click "Next" and click a few more times before I can select the right account.
I don't have direct experience with Teams (I assume it's similar to Google). Being all-in is clearly the easiest solution--using it every day, having it as your only video solution, having an account and staying signed in. The annoyance is the friction that it can't be your only solution and when it's one of many there's a lot of mental energy to jump through the hoops.
Zoom does have a web version and the native app is almost inappropriately too easy to install. Joining a video chat just means having a meeting ID or clicking a URL.
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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!
> 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?
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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.
Why would people give meeting information, content, participants list to be parsed and advertised against to Google?
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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…
> ...none of those other "competitors" seem to feel the need to have 4 different products in order to operate in this space. So? Google wants to make more money than they do. What's wrong with that? Also what's wrong with "me-too"-ism? Pepsi exists even though Coca-Cola is fine. Verizon exists even though AT&T works. What you call "me-too"-ism, I just call capitalism and healthy competition. Google's strategy has not…
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 plat…
But why doesn't Meet have these features already...?! ️