With the current situation, a lot of businesses have shifted to a Work From Home approach, which means meetings will most likely be done online.
Google Cloud recently made an announcement that Google Meet, Google’s premium video-conferencing solution will be free for everyone with availability rolling out over the coming weeks.
Starting in early May, anyone with an email address can sign up for Meet and make use of its many features available to G Suite’s business and education users such as scheduling, screen sharing, real-time captions, and layouts, including the expanded tiled view.
Google will be gradually expanding Meet’s availability to more and more people over the coming weeks. Users can sign up to be notified when it’s available.
Individual Users
Once roll out is complete, anyone with an email address will be able to use Meet for free via meet.google.com as well as the Meet mobile app for iOS or Android. Enjoying the new Meet experience will require a free Google Account. There’s a time limit of 60 minutes for the free product, but this policy will not be implemented until after September 30.
Teams that are not G Suite customers
For organizations that aren’t G Suite customers, there’s G Suite Essentials, which includes Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides for content creation and real-time collaboration.
Through September 30, G Suite Essentials and all of its advanced features will be free of charge. Those interested in the product may complete this form to get in touch with the sales team.
Existing G Suite customers
G Suite’s 6 million existing customers already have access to Meet. Admins simply need to enable Meet by following these instructions. G Suite is also providing three ways for new and current enterprise customers to access Meet through September 30 including access to advanced features for all G Suite customers, free additional Meet licenses for existing G Suite customers without changes to their current contract, and free G Suite Essentials for new enterprise customers.
Schools and Higher Education Institutions
Meet is included in G Suite for Education, a suite of free Google apps tailored specifically for schools, and can be used for virtual classes, PTA meetings, tutorings, school socials, as well as parent-teacher conferences.
Emman has been writing technical and feature articles since 2010. Prior to this, he became one of the instructors at Asia Pacific College in 2008, and eventually landed a job as Business Analyst and Technical Writer at Integrated Open Source Solutions for almost 3 years.
