Modern technology is being upgraded day by day and we are getting more useful gadgets, tools, software’s to make our life easier. By using the smartphone in our hands, we can do everything we want.
Although, the world was hit hard last year by the pandemics and since then, we have learned so many things that were unclear before.
The pandemic has especially created a situation where no one can leave their homes. Everyone has been doing activities online while locking themselves down in their own residences.
Fortunately, we have social media, online learning and educational platforms, ecommerce stores through which we somehow try to tackle the outrageous pandemic situation.
Pandemic clears a thing we have to rely on online activities hugely in the days to come. And so, we have to develop more in modern communication and technology and have to build a better online world.
Software and applications that helped us a lot in the pandemic situation, Google Meeting is the notable one of them.
It has helped a lot to bring people together to communicate, distance learning, video conferencing between teammates, doctors, and so on.
However, not only in the pandemic situation, google meet has become a great modern online application that comes in huge benefits to all kinds of people including businesses, organizations, and students.
If you have already used this useful application for any of your purposes, then you have experienced its usefulness. But if you don’t use it, this article will show you everything about Google meet. So, let’s get into it,
Contents
What is google meet?
Google meet is a video communication application that comes as a part of Google’s workspace. In other words, it is a freemium video conferencing application developed by google adds flexible dimensions to virtual meetings.
Google meet is formerly known as hangout Meet. It is one of two apps that constitute the replacement for Google Hangouts, the other being Google Chat.
Google Meet has become widely popular because it’s almost free to use and the interface that makes it the easiest online virtual meeting application. Typically google always puts user friendliness as its first consideration.
You may be familiar with Gmail, google drive, and other google applications. All of them include a lofty user interface and user experience.
You can start with google meet at any time you want. If you are using a PC or laptop, you don’t even need to download any cumbersome software to start with google meet. You just need a google account to start video meetings with google meet.
You can make your own virtual meeting with friends or anyone you want and you can also join others virtual conferences through the code or link they will provide.
However, google meet is free to use but there are some premium features that will be unlocked by purchasing. We will discuss the both free and premium features of google meet and will also disclose all the aspects of this in the next. Till then, stay connected.
What is google meet used for?
Google meet comes handy in so many applications where virtual meeting, video conferencing is required. Unlike other video calling and social media messenger applications, google meet is mostly used for professional purposes.
You can see business, commercial and non-commercial organizations, schools use google meet to make virtual meetings between colleagues, students, and teachers, family get ups, and so on.
As it is free, small and mid sized businesses use it to communicate effectively where all the business persons can join seamlessly. It includes all the necessary options to make video conferences seamless to the users by providing user oriented experience.
Google meets free version allows up to 100 meeting participants where the enterprise tire offers max of 250 meeting participants.
Since Google’s main use is video meetings online, there are so many purposes that one can use this application.
Online meeting
Google meet is considerably one of the best applications for online meetings. it is good at both one to one and multiple participants online meetings. To ensure the best online meeting experience, it includes multiple screen layout, screen sharing, real time captions, noise cancellation, and so on.
Whether you are a small business or big industry, you can use google meet to conduct emergency online meetings when needed.
Live discussion
Google meet has the potential to use it for online live discussions, talk shows and can stream it to spectators. Online live discussion makes a huge sense in some cases when people from different areas choose online platforms to make the live discussions about any issues.
Google meet is used for social media live discussions where participants discuss specific topics and social media users can see it live. One can set the live stream date on google calendar and share the link on social media.
Google meet has messaging feature through which participants can send text messages and links to another video chat participant during a video call. The message will be visible to every participant on the video call.
Distance learning
Google makes the application highly responsive for distance learning. When teachers and students can’t meet physically, it needs to arrange such distance learning events to keep the process going on.
Google meet is the application used for distance learning all over the world. Especially, in the pandemic situation, it proves the importance of integrating such online learning tools for educational purposes.
Schools or organizations can use Google Meet for video class meetings, communicate with students, parents, set up regular classes, integrate google calendar for scheduling classes, record live sessions and upload it for further offline view.
The benefits of using google meet in distance learning can’t be denied. It has made it so easy that teachers can create an interactive learning platform online where they can monitor student’s activities, give lessons and discuss effectively.
Job interview
People are mostly in search of remote job opportunities and with the help of social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and recruitment becomes simple at present. There are social media groups and pages where the recruiter’s post about their recruitment and those who are seeking jobs, connect and communicate with them.
In addition to that, recruiters can take interviews online to have an idea before calling them face to face meets up. In such cases, most of the employees prefer google meet to take online interviews of the job applicants.
As it is free, applicants can install google meet instantly if they don’t have it and can join the video call by the shared link or code.
Scheduled meetings
You can engage in scheduled meetings, events with google meet. You can set up or start a new Google meet video meeting from the meet, Gmail, Google calendar, and other scheduling systems.
After creating a new meeting in google meet, you can schedule it and include the participant’s name. So, when the scheduled day arrives, it will automatically notify the participants via Gmail to participate in the meeting in time.
What are the features of google meet?
Google Meet makes it easy to start a secure video meeting. Join from any modern web browser or download the app, and you’re ready to go.
Google meet is a feature rich video collaborating application that includes all you need to experience the best virtual meeting platform. The platform is also upgrading to remove frictions that cause users to have bad experiences. Moreover, Google mentioned that they are intended to bring google AI to create high quality meetings.
Google AI for meeting enhances the overall user experience no matter what device they are using. Google meet has an incredible feature called low light mode that uses AI to automatically shift the device’s screen light and make it adjustable in dark environments.
However, as a freemium video calling application, google meet has huge free and some paid features. Here are the features of google meet that anyone can experience by using its free version given below.
- Ease to use
- Unlimited number of meetings
- Two-way and multi-way audio and video calls with a resolution of up to 720p
- Screen sharing with participants
- Chat and messaging while on a video meeting
- Real time captioning during meetings
- Call encryption between all users
- Noise-canceling audio filter
- Low-light mode for video
- Great device compatibility
- Video and audio preview screen
- Adjustable layouts and screen settings
- Change or blur the background
- Ability to call into meetings using a dial-in number in the US
- Controls for meeting hosts
Google meet feature varies for google workspace account owners. They are,
Features for Google Workspace accounts
Google meet includes specific features for google workspace account holders. Google workspace account provides a lot of benefits for all google included services.
If you are keen to have a personal google workspace account, you can grab some extra benefits using google drive, google meet, google form, google classroom, and others.
Here are the specific features that are only available in Google’s workspace account.
- Up to 100 members per call for Google Workspace Starter users, up to 150 for Google Workspace Business users, and up to 250 for Google Workspace Enterprise users
- Ability to call into meetings with a dial-in number from selected countries
- Password-protected dial-in numbers for Google Workspace Enterprise edition users
- Real-time closed captioning based on speech recognition
- Background blurring and virtual backgrounds
How to get started with google meet?
To get started with google meet, you should have initial components like microphone and camera to start or join in a video meeting.
If you are using a smartphone, you just need headphones or you can still go without headphones. It is better to connect a headphone before joining any virtual meeting.
On the other hand, if you are using a PC or laptop, you just need a camera and headphones particularly connected with your device.
Then you have to navigate google meet through the device you are using and create an account on it. According to your device, you have to access google meet differently.
For smartphone users, google meet has a dedicated application that you have to install from the app store. After installing, you have to select Gmail and start using google meet.
But if you are a PC or laptop user, you don’t have to download the application to use it. Just go to your browser and navigate ‘Google meet’. It will take you directly to the google meet web interface where you have to sign in with google account to join or create the meeting.
Google meet pricing: How much google meet costs?
Anyone can use the google meet free version with a google account but as previously said, it also includes paid plans. Paid plans range from $6 per user per month to $18 per user per month.
Free plan is adjustable to any personal video conferencing purpose. While Google meets paid plans designed for big industries to stay organized with all their employees. As it allows up to 300 meeting participants in a virtual meeting.
If you are looking for more than video conferencing then paid plans will be the best value for your move. Google meets paid potentialities only available in any google workspace plan purchase.
There are four different business plans Google workspace offers for potential users. They are,
- Business starter
- Business standard
- Business plus
- Enterprise
You can purchase the business starter edition for just $6 per month which will provide you 100-participant video meetings and 30 GB of storage per user.
The business standard plan offers 150 participants per video meeting and you will get a breathing amount of storage 2 TB only for $12 per month. This is considered the best value package for small businesses and organizations.
The business plus offers more than two previous plans. It allows a max of 250 meeting participants and upgrades the storage limit up to 5 TB per user. Business plus costs $18 per month that’s nothing huge for the offerings that come with it.
And lastly, the enterprise plan offers white level opportunities to the user as they can negotiate with the authority to create custom packages for themselves. Therefore, it doesn’t have any transparent price.
If you are a business, then purchasing any of the business plans of google workspace will reveal to you some beneficial features of all workspace applications.
Finally,
Google meet is admittedly one of the best video conferencing applications that makes virtual meetings possible with just a few clicks. Moreover, you will get to use all the exclusive features with its free version that is a lot for such kinds of applications.
Whatever your purpose of requiring a video communication application, you can choose google meet to fulfill your demand.
Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
Here are some frequently asked questions included. If you have any of these inquiries on your mind, you can get the answer below.
How to sign up for Google Meet?
Signing up on google meet is so easy. You just need to go to the browser and type ‘Google meet’ on the search bar. And you jump into the google meet website from where you can sign up or your google meet account.
On the upper left corner of the window, you can see options like ‘join a meeting’ and ‘Start a meeting’. You should click on the start and it will ask to provide google account that you want to use. Then you have input the password and you just sign up on google meet.
How to access Google Meet?
You can access google meet with smartphone and PC whatever you have. With smartphone, you have to install the google meet application to access it and with PC or laptop, you can directly access it through its website. Just search Google meet in any browser to access google meet from PC or laptop.
Is google meet secure platform?
Google meet is a secured video meeting application that cares for the user’s security. Using google meet for your video meeting requirements, take advantage of the same secure-by-design infrastructure, built-in protection, and global network that Google uses to secure your information and safeguard your privacy.
So, you don’t have to worry about security because Google itself takes charge of this issue.
How to schedule meeting on google meet?
Google meet allows scheduling the meeting, share the meeting link with the people you want to join in your meeting. To schedule a meeting, follow the steps below.
- Open the meet app on your smartphone or go to google meet with your PC/laptop
- Select ‘New meeting’
- Get meeting link or invite people through the options ‘Get a meeting link to share’ or ‘Share invite’
- After that, you have two options left to implement your virtual meeting. make the meeting instant or schedule it in google calendar
You have to choose the schedule option to make a scheduled meeting on google meet. However, you can schedule a meeting from Google calendar. For this, open the calendar app > tap ‘event’ > add guest > hit done and save.