Google makes Hangout Meet free to counter Coronavirus
Due to the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic has completely disrupted the tech world. Manufacturing is on halt, tech events are being cancelled, stores have been shut down and tech companies have lowered their next quarter revenue guidance due to the virus outbreak. Amid the ongoing health crisis, companies are taking special measures to ensure that their employees and their users stay safe. Now, Google, in a bid to help its users, has made some of the Hangouts Meet features available for free its G-Suite users.
As a part of its efforts to help students and employees connect with one another as they attend lectures and meetings from their homes, Google is rolling out free access to its advanced Hangouts Meet app, which is a video-conferencing app available as a part of the G-Suite that helps users to connect in groups for video chats, to all G Suite and G Suite for Education customers.
“…as more businesses adjust their work-from-home policies and adopt reduced travel plans in response to COVID-19, we’re helping to ensure that all globally distributed teams can still reliably meet face to face, even if employees are not in the same location,” Google wrote in its blog post.
The advanced Hangouts Meet features will allow companies to add up to 250 participants to a video meeting and live stream content to up to 100,000 viewers within a domain. In addition to that, these features will also enable users to record meetings and save them to Google Drive.
These features will be available “through July 1, 2020 to all G Suite customers globally,” Alphabet Inc CEO Sundar Pichai Tweeted.