Google has just announced that it is making its premium video conferencing service Google Meet free and available to anyone.
Staring in early May, Google Meet will be available to anyone with an email address. It will have most of the features that were available to business and education users.
If you were looking for a free video conferencing app, you can now use Google Meet to schedule, join or start secure video meetings. You can download mobile apps or access on the web at meet.google.com.
The company has also confirmed that Google Meet has also seen a surge in user base due to the work from the home policy adopted by several companies recently. Now there are 100 million participants meeting on the Meet app daily. The useable has seen peak daily usage grow by 30x since January. The company is also adding roughly 3 million new users every day.
Google claims that Meet is a secure and reliable video conferencing app. The app has a host of controls such as the ability to admit or deny entry, mute or remove participants, and more.
Google has confirmed that it doesn’t use Meet data for advertising and the company also doesn’t sell your data to Thord parties. It doesn’t allow anonymous users and offers encrypted calls. It works on the web in Chrome and other modern browsers along with apps available for both Android and iOS.
If I compare Meet with competitors, Zoom has 300 million daily active users and Microsoft Teams reportedly has 44 million.
Google meet was launched as a business video conferencing app back in March 2017.
