When it comes to video calling nowadays Zoom has become the
most popular option out there. But now that Google has announced that Google
Meets is available for free I think it's time to dive in and see how it actually
compares to Zoom and which one of these video calling services you may want to
use.
Now Google has actually been doing video calling for as long
as Zoom has. Both had their initial products launch in 2013, however, Zoom has
historically been focused on business conferencing for education and
businesses, competing with other vendors like Cisco's WebEx and Blue jeans.
Google's first video called product was Hangouts and that was mainly focused on
the consumer market to compete with Skype. Over the years Google has debuted
additional communication products like Google Duo and then finally Google Meet
in 2017 which targeted Google's G Suite enterprise clients.
Fast-forward to just a few months ago and it seems like Zoom
took over the world in a matter of days when the Covid-19 pandemic hit. Why did
that happen you may ask? Well out of all of the video calling services out
there, Zoom's is by far the easiest to use when actually trying to get into a
meeting you just download an app put in a code and bam you're in the meeting
now this, of course, led to an infamous issue that got its own name Zoom bombing
where people who typically were not originally invited to a meeting would get
access to the code comes into the meeting and would stream inappropriate videos
on famous people, Zoom calls zoom has since added some security features to
prevent this while Zoom calls are dead easy to use and free they don't last
forever and if you've used a free Zoom account you've likely already run into
that 40-minute time limit for a Zoom meeting also if you try to dial into a
Zoom meeting through a telephone line that can have an additional cost this is
one of the major differences between google meet and zoom.
Google Meet has a
time limit cap of 60 minutes for up to 100 participants however now through September
that cap has been lifted up to 24 hours per meeting another huge difference
between these two platforms is that with Google Meet you have to have a Google
account and with the zoom, you do not have to have a Zoom account to join a meeting
you just download an app put in a code and bam you're in the meeting now while
zoom does have an app for the computer you can use Zoom just in a browser as
well though there are quite a few features missing from the web client like
gallery view recording a meeting scheduling a one-time or recurring meeting
pulls live-streaming share and annotate a whiteboard and all chat contact and
setting menu toggles google meet works in any modern browser on a computer like
Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Safari there's no app to download for meat on computers
and it's well-integrated now with Gmail as well as Google Calendar when you
create an invite on Google Calendar it just takes you one click to add a Google
Meet invite link all right so that's a little bit about the big differences between
these two platforms.
Now let's take a look at the user experience and user the interface of Google Meet and Zoom and how they compare when you go to
meetgoogle.com you see a pretty simple screen you can immediately start meeting
or enter a meeting code to join an existing meeting you also have the option on
the right-hand side to schedule a meeting when you fire up the zoom app on the desktop you're presented with a simple layout a button to start a new meeting
schedule an upcoming meeting join an existing meeting and share screen when you
start a meeting on Zoom you're presented with a simple user interface on the left side of the bottom bar you have controls to turn on and off your video and the microphone you now have a security button that when clicked gives you quick actions
that you can take to make your meeting more secure like enabling a waiting room
where people who want to join your meeting will wait until you approve them to
enter the meeting you can also toggle on and off whether or not you want to
allow your participants to be able to share their screen chat rename themselves
or unmute themselves from there.
There are buttons to see the participants open up the chat
and know that you can send individual chat messages to specific in a Zoom call
as well as send messages out to the entire group on the call which is pretty
cool you also have a button to record the meeting as well as add reactions you
can change the meeting view up at the top right-hand corner when you have
multiple participants in your meeting with gallery view being the most popular
and the view that makes Zoom look like Zoom now to gets the cool Zoom
background replacement feature on a Mac click on Zoom our preferences and then
virtual background here you'll be able to create a virtual background or use
your own photo as a background and those are just some of the main popular
features of Zoom.
There are of course a lot of other settings and preferences
you can enable with zoom now let's take a look at Google Meet when you click
start a meeting it brings you to holding screen where you can double-check that
your hair is good and then decide whether or not you want to keep your camera
and mic on before you enter the meeting when you click into the meeting you'll
see that fewer options are presented to you than in Zoom the bottom left hand
corner shows you the meeting details which you can expand Center on the bottom
bar or the buttons to turn on and off your mic and camera as well as end the
call you can click the people icon in the top right-hand corner to see all of
the participants in the meeting and you can also access the chat in this area
of the UI as well you can send messages and links to all participants of your
call but do note you cannot send messages to individual call participants in
the right corner of the bottom bar you'll see a captions button when you enable
this Google will automatically do a live translation of whatever is said in the meeting which is something that Zoom currently cannot do though they do have a
closed caption feature where somebody can type in closed captions for something
like webinar present now will allow you to share your current screen and if you’re
on a Mac when you do this you'll need to click on the smaller version of your the screen in the window that pops up and then clicks share for your screen to be
shared.
Google does have a gallery view now that rival Zoom's that
you can change to when you have multiple people on the call to change the view
Click on the three dots in the bottom bar and hit change layout or if you do
nothing it should automatically switch to a tiled view when a certain number of
people join the call the three dots menu also links to settings where you can
change your audio and visual settings for google meet I’ve actually used both
of these platforms on and off for over the past year now so I know what you're going
to ask me you're going to ask me, okay Anik tell me which one should use.
My answer there is it depends I'd say go use google meet if
you just need a simple video calling solution because it works pretty well it’s
got basic features you don't have to download an app for it as long as
everybody has a Google account it's going to work really well for your
situation and the biggest plus right now for using Google Meet is there is no 40-minute
time limit the time limit per meeting is 24 hours now keep in mind that time the limit will reduce to 60 minutes come September 2020.
Now if you need a video calling solution that has more
advanced features like live-streaming or background replacement then I'd say
yes, you definitely want to use Zoom. It's the solution everybody has heard of
and it works really well now if you've used both Google Meet and Zoom, let me
know in the comments which platform you prefer.
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