Google will allow business and education users on Gmail to directly take calls on its video conferencing tool Meet, starting Thursday. The new feature is being offered because the Alphabet unit seeks to maximize security and other concerns with rival services.
The mixing of Meet with email is that the first of several features being launched before schedule due to a surge in demand for video conferencing.
Meet, which is out there only to colleges , businesses, and governments and is distinct from the consumer-focused Hangouts tool, has added daily users faster than the other Google service since January. many institutions now are counting on Meet due to lock downs related to the corona-virus.
Other functionalities are going to be added later this month, Soltero said. Meet will offer a layout displaying up to 16 call participants directly , resembling a well-liked option on rival Zoom that its users have compared to a grid within the opening sequence of yank television program Brady Bunch. additionally , Meet will improve video quality in dim lighting and filtering of ground noise , like keyboard clicks and slamming doors.
Meet’s user rate of growth but said a recent peak was 60% more users compared to each day earlier. Google announced last Thursday that Meet, which is out there on a desktop browser or through mobile apps, was adding 2 million new users per day and had quite 100 million education users across 150 countries.
Google isn’t charging customers for upgrades to Meet-related features like large video calls during a six-month period ending in September. The policy, which is aimed toward winning over customers within the end of the day , could increase the strain on Google’s profits at a time when its ads sales business is taking successful .
Challenging rivals
Video chatting tools from Microsoft, Zoom, and Cisco have also reported record growth since lock-downs began. But some companies and schools later banned Zoom over security issues it’s since tried to repair , while Microsoft and Cisco services are often tougher for first-time users to harness.
