Google recently confirmed that it is rebranding Hangouts Meet to Google Meet. Now, the company has announced that it is extending its premium video chat features for schools and other organisations through 30th September.
Previously, the company had announced that the premium features for the Google Meet would be available to all G Suite and G Suite for Education customers through 1st July 2020. The features include the ability for up to 250 participants to join a call, live stream support for up to 100,000 viewers and the ability to record and save calls.
The search engine giant has also said that it has added up to two million new users to the platform each day since the announcement. It says that more than 100 million students and teachers are now using Google Classroom, which is the company’s suite of educational tools that also includes Meet.
The timing of this announcement from Google seems very apt given that the usage of such online tools is increasing rapidly. While Zoom has benefited most with remote working but the company is under scrutiny and many organisations are now ditching Zoom over privacy and security related issues.
Removing the Hangouts branding in favor of Google name and extending the period to offer premium features for free, Google could further chip away at Zoom’s popularity. The features that Google Meet is currently offering for free are typically only available to people on the “enterprise” tier of G Suite, which costs $25 per user per month.
