Wait, they had something simple to understand (Duo for consumers, Meet for professionals), and now everyone has access to two different products doing about the same thing?!
Google and messaging products... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chat
I just want to +1 Google Meet, its one of the rare video chat products that works without any flaws with 150+ people in a room.
If I read it right, they still require everybody joining to have a Google account. Which means the others that don't require this will keep growing. I mean, we're a Google shop ok, but requiring our customers to use google accounts is just something that we can not do.
Suddenly every big tech company wants a piece of the zoom pie.
I quite like Google hangouts (now meet?), it's simple to use and comes packaged free with g-suite.
I run a small business so for just myself it's less than $100.
Amazing value.
This is great, we've been using Meet a lot since WFH started and it's been pretty solid and decent enough quality.
My only gripe and unless I'm missing it, it's not possible to log into Meet on Android without also logging into the Google account on the device too. This is frustrating because sometimes I want to jump on a work call but all I've got is my personal device handy. I really wish they'd separate out Meet App users from Device users like the iOS version of the app :(
HN headline inserts “is now” incorrectly, the source headline does not say that and the text indicates a phased rollout starting next week.
This is of course a good development for those cases where Jitsi is unstable. Although:
>Meetings are limited to 60 minutes for the free product, though we won’t enforce this time limit until after Sept. 30.
So actually it won't be different from Zoom because there's going to be an - albeit longer - time limit. Not enforcing this during the upcoming months of quarantine is a nice move.
We are being spammed by Google Account Managers to join in on the Google Meet, even though it's not available for our basic tier. After we have specifically declined the invitation multiple times, we are now being spammed to join in for free until September 30th. I do not want to break the Account Manger's heart, but we simply cannot rely on any product Google makes[0]. We still use docs/sheets and email, but that's about it - hopefully they won't manage to kill/mess that up as well.
And Zoom stock is down 7% right now. https://www.google.com/search?tbm=fin&q=NASDAQ:+ZM
They've also added Meet to G Suite mail menus. Is there a way to get rid of those links?
I hope Google eats Zoom alive by just throwing resources and whatever cloud service power at this. Video chat should only always have been browser based website/web app and never involved installers and stuff.
It can't do PC audio when presenting so a video or other content won't make it through without cleverly routing your PC audio through your mic. I have a GSuite account for my domain as it has a lot of useful tools for cheap (1 user). I was using it for hang out type sessions with friends and family but we moved to other tools to play party games or similar with others.
I guess where I'm going is if they allowed audio when presenting I'd use it for everything again.
- Google Hangouts
- Google Hangouts Meet
- Google Hangouts Chat
- Hangouts Chat
- Google Chat
- Google Talk
- Google Allo
- Google Due
- Google Voice
- Google Meet
- Android Messages
- Youtube Messages
Product management at its best. Half of the time I don't know which app I am using.
Did anyone notice the picture of the doctors office (in the press release) has a picture on the wall that is blurred out?
Why aren't we all using free video chat clients that run over webrtc?
Must use chrome extension. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-meet-grid-v...
and just like that, zoom now faces its doom....
Zoom grew a lot with the long tail. Facebook got in the game. Now Google.
Large corporations running the infrastructure to connect us and mediate our interactions. This is how it’s been from the beginning. It’s the first stage. Like we had with America Online / MSN / Compuserve.
But eventually organizations want to host their own software and own their own brand, database, relationships and so on. Maybe customize the experience and integrate it into their website.
In fact the Web itself came and replaced AOL and others with an open protocol (HTTP) where anyone can permissionlessly set up their own domain and host their own website.
The Feudalism of rentseeking corporations has been replaced with a free market of hosting companies, and trillions of dollars in wealth were unleashed.
Today, Wordpress plays that role for Web 1.0 (publishing) powering 34% of all websites. But what is out there that will power even Web 2.0 ... namely all the social networking and interactions we have come to expect from Facebook, Google, Telegram etc.?
Web browsers alrrady have all the front end capabilities including Web Push notifications and WebRTC videoconferencing and even PaymentRequest for payments etc.
There just needs to be a platform that lets people take ready-made components, like wordpress plugins, but Web 2.0 (chatrooms, events, etc.) that are all based around the same standardized unified core (user accounts, permissions, etc.) and are user friendly enough.
That’s basically an operating system. For example before MacOS/Windows developers all built their own buttons/menus/windows etc. Before UNIX people built their own file management etc.
These OSes standardized the layer 1 so developers can just use standard buttons and reason on higher layers. Developers of Photoshop for Windows did not have to implement custom menus and buttons. And because of the standardized components, the users across apps were used to a common language, they knew what buttons and menus did, and even if the app used a custom version it had to be close enough to be recognizable.
So in this same way we need a social operating system for the web. Like Wordpress for Web 2.0 — open source and let anyone build their own Facebook or Google Meet out of reusable components. Ideally the core should be all designed together, like BSD, so the underlying OS is a good extensive foundation and not a hodgepodge of components.
Ok. Hopefully you take the below as a “Show HN”
We built it over the last 10 years and we’re giving it away:
https://github.com/Qbix/Platform
We are still working on updating the documentation tob be as cool as for Angular and React. But it’s more than those frameworks. It includes a PHP backend with MySQL (pluggable) database support, with Node.js optional for websockets realtime updates and offline notifications to apple/google/chrome/firefox/etc. On the front end it has integrations with Cordova for releasing native apps in the store, such as https://yang2020.app
Just as an example if you wanted to build videoconferencing into your website, you would just do:
Q.Streams.WebRTC.start(options)
Q.Users.login(options)
Q.Calendars.addToCalendar()
Q.activate(
Q.Tool.setUpElement(
element,
“Streams/chat”,
options
);
);
$(element).tool(name)
.activate(options)
Check out the GitHub link. And especially the videos there. It’s totally free and open source. You can build something like Yang2020 in a day. We are using it for our clients, who want custom work done.
If you run into a snag or want to ask anything, just hit me up at greg at the domain qbix.com
Finally... if you are a PHP or JS developer, and want to contribute to the project, please first try to install it yourself and play with with it. (We have tutorials but we are making more.) And email me. We have lots of clients who want these custom online communities right now, and we are looking to equip developers in diff countries to build them using this platform.
Oh and last thing... it’s interoperable with everything else so you’re not locked in. You can take a wordpress site that uses React and drop a chatroom or videoconferencd in there and gradually start to build community features, an app in the store and reward people for inviting others etc.
This is a space they probably should own by now, but they blew it by not having their messaging story together. Nobody can remember what this year’s Google messaging tool is, no use figuring it out because they’ll shutter it and replace it with something else soon. I don’t understand how they made this so confusing.
Asleep at the wheel until May, now envious of the numbers scored by Zoom and others, huh?
Free for Everyone until they decide to pull the plug and charge for it.
Nice! Now they can steal more information from me! I love Google!
Oh look! They made another communication tool!
So we have now:
- Google Hangouts
- Google Meet
- Google Duo
Am I missing any other? Is there any difference between them?
Google have got to learn that they have not rolled out a successful consumer product in quite some time whereas Apple do, and a big part of it is this stupid, stupid "rolling out in the next few weeks" attitude they love so much.
Product launches need a big red go button in 2020 or they don't work, especially when you're already three months behind the curve.
My account still says "Your account only lets you join meetings".
This change was the obvious thing to do, but they should have done it years ago when they announced that hangouts was dead. It was very strange, no one used hangouts because it was abandoned even when it was still better than the competition.
I know google is super unreliable and they kill what you love (reader, wave, etc...)