In a bid to make the video conferencing easily accessible to people, Google has integrated its Meet video conferencing platform directly into Gmail. Some people are already witnessing a link that can launch Meet in the Gmail interface on the left sidebar. It should arrive for other users soon enough. It was available to employees of some companies or some education customers via G Suite. However, according to the recent announcement of the company, Google has made Meet free for anyone who has a Google account. It also allows people to have meetings of up to of 100 people and have no time limits.

After subscribers for Zoom went up, Google has revved up Meet in each and every way possible to take on Zoom. It is to note that Zoom has been the most used video conferencing application as many have been using it for meetings while working from home. In majority areas, people have been working from home for almost two months now in the wake of the Coronavirus outbreak. Meet is expected to have some privacy controls which Zoom is lacking. While Zoom has just a dial-in function to join the meeting, Meet on the other hand, works differently.

With Meet, any user will first have to log into the google account. If a link has not been sent by the meeting host, the user will be sent to a waiting area where he/she has to wait till the request to be a part of the meeting is approved.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is also ramping up its videoconferencing space with Skype. It has also increased its Teams app to 75 million daily active users, Microsoft has said in a statement earlier. Meet, on the other hand, is adding around 3 million new users daily. Google currently has Hangouts Chat, Meet, and the original Hangouts, along with the Android Chat app and mobile video chat app Duo.

culled from FE Online