Google Meet, Mountain View’s video conferencing platform, goes back and is no longer completely free
All those who had grown fond of Google Meet during the lockdown, preferring it to other video conferencing apps like Zoom Meetings or Microsoft Teams, will soon have to choose: pay or give up Meet’s most interesting features.
On September 30, in fact, expires the offer of Google that, in April, had decided to release to everyone the “premium” features of the app. Google’s move was not entirely beneficial: at that time Zoom was galloping and growing strongly and Big G risked losing a good chunk of the video calling market, in which it has been trying to enter as a protagonist since the first Hangouts, the one of the defunct Google+. Now, however, the lockdown is over in many parts of the world and, with it, the party is over too: Google Meet is back to paid, at least for those who want to use the most interesting features.
Google Meet paid: nothing to communicate
“We have nothing to communicate about changes to the promotion and advanced features that are expiring,” a Google spokesperson said Friday in an email to The Verge, “If anything changes, we’ll communicate it.” A few words, but very clear also considering the fact that the expiration of the promotion is now a matter of hours.
Google, then, would like to monetize the user base of Meet that has been built in recent months by offering a free platform for advanced communication. Will it succeed? Not necessarily, since Google Meet for free, from September 30, will not be a great service.
Google Meet: what changes from September 30
To change, from September 30, will be mainly one thing: the maximum duration of video calls. It drops, inexorably, to 60 minutes beyond which the connection is interrupted. The possibility of making meetings with a maximum number of 100 participants will also be eliminated.
Those who want to continue to use the advanced features of Meet will have to take out an annual subscription to G Suite, with prices that start at 4.68 euros per month for the “Basic” and go up to 23 euros per month for the “Enterprise”.
The Enterprise subscription also allows you to associate a phone number to a meeting, to participate with a simple phone call, even without network coverage.