With Zoom’s recent explosive growth, competitors are frantically trying to respond. Millions of people have been using Zoom for work, video chats with friends, and school. This has not gone unnoticed by rivals like Google. Today Google announced that Google Meet, formally known as Google Hangouts Meet, will be free for everyone. Previously Google Meet was only available to G Suite users. Full availability will be rolling over in the next few weeks, and users can sign up to be notified when it’s available. Google meet can support up to 100 people and allows for unlimited time (until at least October). This move looks to counter Zoom’s popularity.
Google is also taking measure to adjust Meet to match certain features of Zoom. A new feature to show up to 16 people simultaneously rolled out last week and it strikes quite the similarity to Zoom’s gallery view (Peters, 2020). Meet is also being integrated into Gmail, which will allow for users to join calls right from Gmail.
