Work from home orders around the world have led to a surge in the use of video conferencing software. Among industry players who have highly benefited from this crisis include Zoom, and Microsoft Teams, who have seen their respective user base skyrocket in the past three months.
Google, on the other hand, has seemingly not been able to attain that level of success. As it turns out, they desperately need that they’re even willing to take that leap of faith to make Google Meet free.
Google announced on Wednesday that its teleconferencing app will now be available at no cost. Google Meet allows up to 100 people on a video call, and making it free might level the playing ground to compete with now fully grown peers in the space.
For now, Google Meet will also offer unlimited calls, but the company plans to introduce a 60 minutes cap towards the end of September. However, the free offer is here to stay, according to Smita Hashim, director of product for Google Meet.
“It’s going to last going forward, just like Gmail… Video conferencing has pretty much become an essential service,” she said. Google Meet has since the beginning been part of G-Suite, and companies had to pay at least $6 to as much as $25 per user.
Since Zoom’s exposure for having lax security, Google Meet like other players in the market, are advertising themselves as the secure alternative – same applies even for a new entrant like Facebook’s Messenger Rooms.
Smita says Google Meet is “very secure, very reliable and very easy to use.”
As the teleconferencing market continues to boom, Google Meet reportedly has 100million daily active users which isn’t badly off, but still below what other competing products have attained.
Last week, Zoom reported that it hit the 300 million mark, while Microsoft Teams yesterday announced that they currently have 200 million active daily users.
Recently, Facebook also jumped into the market by debuting its own specific video conferencing product dubbed Messenger rooms. Messenger Rooms was marketed as a casual video conferencing app that is free, secure and supports up to 50 participants – and does it job right.
Via/Boomberg
