Due to the spread of COVID-19 virus worldwide, many companies and educational institutions are moving their work, meetings, and lectures online. Which is why many companies are offering their services to make the process better for everyone.
Google has decided to do its part and provide all G Suite users with advanced Hangouts Meet features free of cost. Google announced in a recent blog post that it will be rolling out the Hangouts Meet features that are normally available in the premium (paid) package to all users globally free of cost. The free premium Hangouts Meet will stay available till July 1, 2020.
We want to help businesses and schools impacted by COVID-19 stay connected: starting this week, we'll roll out free access to our advanced Hangouts Meet video-conferencing capabilities through July 1, 2020 to all G Suite customers globally. https://t.co/OWWF7s5jjR
— Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) March 3, 2020
The company has decided this in response to high usage of Hangouts Meet video conferencing and Google Classroom by users in different parts of the world including Hong Kong and Vietnam to join online conferences and classes.
The features that will be available to organizations and institutions under this decision are larger meetings, for up to 250 participants per call, live streaming for up to 100,000 viewers within a domain, and the ability to record meetings and save them to Google Drive.
Google has also canceled its annual I/O developer conference this year in light of the recent pandemic and is committed to helping the organization continue its processes amid the virus outbreak. The company says in the blog post:
“We’re committed to supporting our users and customers during this challenging time, and are continuing to scale our infrastructure to support greater Hangouts Meet demand, ensuring streamlined, reliable access to the service throughout this period.”
