
Google Meet premium video conferencing is now free for everyone - thecybernerd
https://www.blog.google/products/meet/bringing-google-meet-to-more-people/
======
wscott
My account still says "Your account only lets you join meetings".

This change was the obvious thing to do, but they should have done it years
ago when they announced that hangouts was dead. It was very strange, no one
used hangouts because it was abandoned even when it was still better than the
competition.

I know google is super unreliable and they kill what you love (reader, wave,
etc...)

~~~
gwicks56
Am I the only one who still uses hangouts? For some reason its the app my wife
and I use, i dont use it with anyone else. It's handy that it pops up in
chrome, and my Google Fi messages pop up in it too.

~~~
soylentcola
I still use it. Partly it's habitual since "GChat" was a big reason I got my
first Gmail account many years ago. At the time, most IM platforms required
you to install a separate application, but since it ran in the browser, I
could keep a Gmail tab open at work or at on university PCs and keep in touch
with Gmail contacts (as well as AIM contacts which was still a decent number
of people back then).

I still use it because it's available on Windows, MacOS, and Linux as well as
both Android and iOS devices. My friends and family are on a variety of
platforms but we can all use Hangouts. I still dislike some of the changes
they've made as it moved from the old Google Talk to Hangouts but being able
to follow conversations on mobile and in my browser is great.

I have a few friends who use iPhones and occasionally complain because they
want to use iMessage, but a good 30-40% of us can't run it since we don't own
iPhones or Apple computers.

------
hadrien01
Wait, they had something simple to understand (Duo for consumers, Meet for
professionals), and now everyone has access to two different products doing
about the same thing?!

Google and messaging products...
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chat](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chat)

~~~
londons_explore
Except they didn't interoperate, Duo didn't work on laptops, Meet had terrible
sound quality unless you had a $1000+ laptop because it used software video
decoding...

~~~
microcolonel
> _Meet had terrible sound quality unless you had a $1000+ laptop because it
> used software video decoding_

How did video decoding in software affect sound quality? Is this just a
typo/brainfart?

~~~
cameron_b
The video encoding/decoding could have leveraged hardware accelerated codecs
and freed up resources for audio encoding/decoding

~~~
microcolonel
Audio encoding is not of particularly high complexity. Even the highest
complexity modes of the best codec right now (Opus) are like 60-100x real time
on commodity hardware, and not too far off on phones.

------
Raed667
I just want to +1 Google Meet, its one of the rare video chat products that
works without any flaws with 150+ people in a room.

~~~
mft_
During the CV lockdown, there's been a creeping adoption of paid Zoom accounts
in the large company I work for, despite ubiquitous free Meet (which is also
easier to schedule and use, given we use GSuite).

This seems to be mainly based on the perception (which I share) that Zoom
copes better with large meetings and/or bandwidth challenges, and possibly
offering the 'tile view' that Meet previously lacked. (It may also be because
of novelty, or novelties such as being able to replace the background, which
people love.)

~~~
ghaff
>Meet (which is also easier to schedule and use, given we use GSuite)

This is one of the main reasons I mostly use Meet. It's basically a couple
clicks in Google Calendar to add the video meeting link.

~~~
oaiey
A couple? One for adding (or automatically always), Two when joining, One when
you have hardware in physical meeting rooms. It is perfect.

------
Kjeldahl
If I read it right, they still require everybody joining to have a Google
account. Which means the others that don't require this will keep growing. I
mean, we're a Google shop ok, but requiring our customers to use google
accounts is just something that we can not do.

~~~
ollyculverhouse
We don't see that and use Meet (via GSuite) to have external calls with people
and have never heard that that require a Google account.

~~~
oaiey
Because the paid G Suite behaves different than the free Meet they announce
now. Makes sense, because external dial (via phone) costs them money.

------
treebornfrog
Suddenly every big tech company wants a piece of the zoom pie.

I quite like Google hangouts (now meet?), it's simple to use and comes
packaged free with g-suite.

I run a small business so for just myself it's less than $100.

Amazing value.

~~~
cactus2093
The crazy thing is google had like 10 years where the zoom pie could have been
theirs for the taking. But they always just let hangouts sit there without
trying much of anything in the way of improving it. I swear for a good 3-5
years in the early to mid 2010’s, almost every time I’d try to join a hangout
meeting in chrome the audio wouldn’t work and I’d have to restart the browser
and try again.

And now they’re actually trying? We’re they genuinely surprised to learn
there’s a market for corporate video chat?

~~~
treebornfrog
They have so much cash they could use to build stuff and push in enterprise
but don't. I feel as though they're a little directionless with their
strategies.

Best product they've created after Gmail has definitely been G suite though.

------
aclelland
This is great, we've been using Meet a lot since WFH started and it's been
pretty solid and decent enough quality.

My only gripe and unless I'm missing it, it's not possible to log into Meet on
Android without also logging into the Google account on the device too. This
is frustrating because sometimes I want to jump on a work call but all I've
got is my personal device handy. I really wish they'd separate out Meet App
users from Device users like the iOS version of the app :(

~~~
Eridrus
This doesn't address your comment about device users per se, but you can have
multiple accounts on your device and meet will let you choose which one to use
when joining calls.

~~~
aclelland
I'd have probably have had to do this but luckily I have an old phone that I
can use for my work account. I just really don't like linking work and
personal accounts at a device level given the multiple ways that might cause
problems.

Thinking on it a little more, I guess that since this product has been
generally aimed at businesses, maybe this isn't normally a problem for people
with company devices.

~~~
izacus
Android has this concept of Work Profiles, where your work account apps are
isolated from your personal apps. It works well with Meet and you have a
single button to immediately disable all the Work apps (including their
notifications).

It gives you way better separation than anything on iOS.

------
dragonwriter
HN headline inserts “is now” incorrectly, the source headline does not say
that and the text indicates a phased rollout starting next week.

------
chki
This is of course a good development for those cases where Jitsi is unstable.
Although:

>Meetings are limited to 60 minutes for the free product, though we won’t
enforce this time limit until after Sept. 30.

So actually it won't be different from Zoom because there's going to be an -
albeit longer - time limit. Not enforcing this during the upcoming months of
quarantine is a nice move.

------
bkovacev
We are being spammed by Google Account Managers to join in on the Google Meet,
even though it's not available for our basic tier. After we have specifically
declined the invitation multiple times, we are now being spammed to join in
for free until September 30th. I do not want to break the Account Manger's
heart, but we simply cannot rely on any product Google makes[0]. We still use
docs/sheets and email, but that's about it - hopefully they won't manage to
kill/mess that up as well.

[0] - [https://killedbygoogle.com/](https://killedbygoogle.com/)

~~~
sp332
You don't have to rely on Meet being around forever though. Video chats are
ephemeral and if Meet goes away for some reason, you can switch to something
else without too much pain.

~~~
cameron_b
It’s not so painful these days but when we actually use conference rooms it’s
a bit more painful to make all the microphones and cameras and displays and
controllers talk to a new platform

------
devy
And Zoom stock is down 7% right now.
[https://www.google.com/search?tbm=fin&q=NASDAQ:+ZM](https://www.google.com/search?tbm=fin&q=NASDAQ:+ZM)

------
rbinv
They've also added Meet to G Suite mail menus. Is there a way to get rid of
those links?

~~~
icebraining
Block the element using uBlock Origin?

------
ChrisArchitect
I hope Google eats Zoom alive by just throwing resources and whatever cloud
service power at this. Video chat should only always have been browser based
website/web app and never involved installers and stuff.

------
charwalker
It can't do PC audio when presenting so a video or other content won't make it
through without cleverly routing your PC audio through your mic. I have a
GSuite account for my domain as it has a lot of useful tools for cheap (1
user). I was using it for hang out type sessions with friends and family but
we moved to other tools to play party games or similar with others.

I guess where I'm going is if they allowed audio when presenting I'd use it
for everything again.

------
finstell
\- Google Hangouts

\- Google Hangouts Meet

\- Google Hangouts Chat

\- Hangouts Chat

\- Google Chat

\- Google Talk

\- Google Allo

\- Google Due

\- Google Voice

\- Google Meet

\- Android Messages

\- Youtube Messages

Product management at its best. Half of the time I don't know which app I am
using.

~~~
dr_dshiv
I love that in Google Hangouts chat, default chat app on Android phone, there
is no search capability.

I keep using it because I'm assuming they will add it eventually. I still find
the Gmail+chat+hangout combo to be extremely robust and easy -- I just don't
know why it isn't supported.

~~~
dmos62
You didn't miss that it's about to get killed right? I've been an avid user of
Google Hangouts. I wonder what will I use instead.

~~~
dr_dshiv
Wait, the chats are getting killed? Or the video? Or is it getting renamed?

Super confused.

~~~
dmos62
I found out about it on
[https://killedbygoogle.com/](https://killedbygoogle.com/) just now. However,
after double-checking, apparently it's some G Suite Hangouts variant that's
getting killed: [https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2019/08/updates-to-
hang...](https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2019/08/updates-to-hangouts-
chat-migration.html)

------
thecybernerd
Did anyone notice the picture of the doctors office (in the press release) has
a picture on the wall that is blurred out?

~~~
onion2k
No, but I did notice that the doctor has a stethoscope around her neck, which
seems strange for an online meeting.

~~~
taborj
"Okay, now hold your laptop's microphone to your chest. I'm going to use this
stethoscope on my speaker; it'll be just like you're here."

------
amelius
Why aren't we all using free video chat clients that run over webrtc?

~~~
7777fps
If you want a serious answer is because peer to peer webRTC doesn't scale
beyond two people.

If you have 4 people every client would need to maintain 3 streams, a total of
6 streams between all participants.

To have any kind of scalability you need a proxy in the middle that can act as
a single stream to each participant.

This middlebox can also handle normalisation, interpolation and other useful
features you might want to smooth things out when clients have connection
difficulties.

Why don't we have a Free Open Source webRTC proxy server implementation?
Because these days just publishing a protocol isn't enough for adoption; not
to mention that proxying large amounts of data will incur a significant cost.

And that hasn't covered the need for authentication, which is yet another
required service.

And if the proxy box is interpolating and gracefully handling frame drops,
does that mean it will be handling _gasp_ decrypted video traffic? Yes, it
will, unless you want to move all that to the client and then have a key
exchange happen not just at the start but a renegotiation every time someone
connects or disconnects.

So you see it's not as simple as, "everyone just opens this URL, webRTC is a
thing duh".

~~~
organian
> Why don't we have a Free Open Source webRTC proxy server implementation?

Isn't that what Jitsi is doing?
[https://github.com/jitsi](https://github.com/jitsi), meet.jit.si

------
emptysands
Must use chrome extension. [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-
meet-grid-v...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-meet-grid-
view/bjkegbgpfgpikgkfidhcihhiflbjgfic)

~~~
MarkyC4
Grid view is the default view now in meet. It rolled out (for my org at least)
yesterday.

~~~
taborj
Oh, that's good to know.

------
foolinaround
and just like that, zoom now faces its doom....

------
EGreg
Zoom grew a lot with the long tail. Facebook got in the game. Now Google.

Large corporations running the infrastructure to connect us and mediate our
interactions. This is how it’s been from the beginning. It’s the first stage.
Like we had with America Online / MSN / Compuserve.

But eventually organizations want to host their own software and own their own
brand, database, relationships and so on. Maybe customize the experience and
integrate it into their website.

In fact the Web itself came and replaced AOL and others with an open protocol
(HTTP) where anyone can permissionlessly set up their own domain and host
their own website.

The Feudalism of rentseeking corporations has been replaced with a free market
of hosting companies, and trillions of dollars in wealth were unleashed.

Today, Wordpress plays that role for Web 1.0 (publishing) powering 34% of all
websites. But what is out there that will power even Web 2.0 ... namely all
the social networking and interactions we have come to expect from Facebook,
Google, Telegram etc.?

Web browsers alrrady have all the front end capabilities including Web Push
notifications and WebRTC videoconferencing and even PaymentRequest for
payments etc.

There just needs to be a platform that lets people take ready-made components,
like wordpress plugins, but Web 2.0 (chatrooms, events, etc.) that are all
based around the same standardized unified core (user accounts, permissions,
etc.) and are user friendly enough.

That’s basically an operating system. For example before MacOS/Windows
developers all built their own buttons/menus/windows etc. Before UNIX people
built their own file management etc.

These OSes standardized the layer 1 so developers can just use standard
buttons and reason on higher layers. Developers of Photoshop for Windows did
not have to implement custom menus and buttons. And because of the
standardized components, the users across apps were used to a common language,
they knew what buttons and menus did, and even if the app used a custom
version it had to be close enough to be recognizable.

So in this same way we need a social operating system for the web. Like
Wordpress for Web 2.0 — open source and let anyone build their own Facebook or
Google Meet out of reusable components. Ideally the core should be all
designed together, like BSD, so the underlying OS is a good extensive
foundation and not a hodgepodge of components.

Ok. Hopefully you take the below as a “Show HN”

We built it over the last 10 years and we’re giving it away:

[https://github.com/Qbix/Platform](https://github.com/Qbix/Platform)

We are still working on updating the documentation tob be as cool as for
Angular and React. But it’s more than those frameworks. It includes a PHP
backend with MySQL (pluggable) database support, with Node.js optional for
websockets realtime updates and offline notifications to
apple/google/chrome/firefox/etc. On the front end it has integrations with
Cordova for releasing native apps in the store, such as
[https://yang2020.app](https://yang2020.app)

Just as an example if you wanted to build videoconferencing into your website,
you would just do:

    
    
      Q.Streams.WebRTC.start(options)
    

It’s as simple as that. And if you want to have a secure user signup, forgot
password, account management you just do:

    
    
      Q.Users.login(options)
    

If you wanted to have events and schedule videoconferencing for various apps
you build (eg group dating or collaboration) you would use

    
    
      Q.Calendars.addToCalendar()
    

Reusable tools are placed like this:

    
    
      Q.activate(
        Q.Tool.setUpElement(
          element,
          “Streams/chat”,
          options
        );
      );
    

or with jQuery:

    
    
      $(element).tool(name)
      .activate(options)
    

You can have tools and subtools and pass options similar to React etc. _Our
goal is to build a growing ecosystem of well tesed reusable components that
anyone can use, even if they are not very technical_.

Check out the GitHub link. And especially the videos there. It’s totally free
and open source. You can build something like Yang2020 in a day. We are using
it for our clients, who want custom work done.

If you run into a snag or want to ask anything, just hit me up at _greg_ at
the domain _qbix.com_

Finally... if you are a PHP or JS developer, and want to contribute to the
project, please first try to install it yourself and play with with it. (We
have tutorials but we are making more.) And email me. We have lots of clients
who want these custom online communities right now, and we are looking to
equip developers in diff countries to build them using this platform.

Oh and last thing... it’s interoperable with everything else so you’re not
locked in. You can take a wordpress site that uses React and drop a chatroom
or videoconferencd in there and gradually start to build community features,
an app in the store and reward people for inviting others etc.

------
solarkraft
Oh look! They made another communication tool!

------
kuu
So we have now:

\- Google Hangouts

\- Google Meet

\- Google Duo

Am I missing any other? Is there any difference between them?

~~~
rhmw2b
Hangouts has video and chat and is being discontinued.

\- Google Meet: Zoom

\- Google Duo: Facetime

\- Google Chat: Slack

~~~
jasonv
want to use google chat to replace the hangouts that I have with a certain
group [because the hangouts interface and mobile notifications aren't great]..
it's available for my G Suite accounts, but not my generic @gmail account.
which is kind of maddening.

------
Mindwipe
Google have got to learn that they have not rolled out a successful consumer
product in quite some time whereas Apple do, and a big part of it is this
stupid, stupid "rolling out in the next few weeks" attitude they love so much.

Product launches need a big red go button in 2020 or they don't work,
especially when you're already three months behind the curve.

