Google Challenges Zoom By Making Meet Free for Everyone
Search engine giant, Google announced earlier today that its launching Meet for free, a video conferencing platform, challenging Zoom. The company’s move comes as the surge in demand for video calling and conferencing platforms rise thanks to the pandemic.
As people must stay inside their homes, Zoom managed to capitalize on the opportunity. And despite the privacy issues faced by the technology company, it has seen a massive surge in users.
So far, Meet is free for the public, but you will need to have a paid G Suite account to call. However, the key difference is that consumers won’t be able to schedule free Meet calls immediately.
According to technology news reports, Google will gradually make its platform free. Starting next week, it will be free, but it will still take a few days before everyone can access it.
The catch is somewhat complicated as said by some critics. It’s reported that after September, free accounts will be limited to meetings that only lasts for 60 mins.
Until then, users can still chat on the platform for as long as they want. Another limit is that meetings on the platform only have a maximum of 100 participants.
And only a few days ago, the company introduced other features such as screen sharing. According to Google, it will still be available along with real-time captions and the latest tiled layout.
Returning to “Normal”
Despite advances in the medical sector and modern technology, company employees aren’t guaranteed safety in their workspaces.
Reports say that Alphabet, Google’s home, is working on ways as to how employees could return to work. The company’s CEO, Sundar Pichai has started discussing plans according to emails sent to their employees yesterday.
The tech company isn’t the first one that’s working on ways to return to their headquarter. Tesla, the electric car manufacturer has already summoned its employees amidst the pandemic.
In the email, the Google boss said that the staff can anticipate an incremental return to the office. However, no moves are yet to happen until June 1st.
Yesterday, the company had its earnings call and investors were delighted by presented figures. Both GOOG and GOOGL stocks are thriving off the post-earnings call euphoria and are rallying this Wednesday.
Although the company actually produced mixed results in its earnings per share and revenue growth. Investors still focused on the strong revenue and the impressive YouTube ad revenue.
