Google has now released details on new features coming soon to its Meet video conferencing software.
To make it easier for participants to join meetings, the company has announced that Meet is coming to the Nest Hub Max so that users can join a meeting with a simple tap or voice command. Beta support for G Suite customers is rolling out now and interested users can apply here.
Meet is designed to scale to support meetings with up to 250 participants or a livestream with 100,000 in-domain viewers. Google recently launched improvements to the video conferencing service's layout that allows users to see up to 16 participant and any content that is being shared all at the same time. However, the company plans to allow users to see up to 49 participants at once.
- Take a look at our list of the best headsets for conference calls right now
- Billions will be spent on video conferencing in 2020
- Asus announces new Google Meet hardware kits
After recently making Google Meet premium video meetings free and available to everyone, Google also has a number of upcoming roadmap enhancements in the works, including hand raising, meeting attendance, custom backgrounds, breakout rooms, Q&A, polling and additional moderator controls.
Returning to the office
As organizations and employees prepare to return to the office, keeping meeting and conference rooms clean will be a top priority to keep workers safe.
In an effort to improve meeting room hygiene, Google will be adding Hey Google voice control to Google Meet hardware. The new feature will be generally available for ASUS and Logitech meeting room kits to make it easier to join and end a meeting using just voice commands.
Collaborating in Google Meet will also soon be easier as Google plans to directly integrate Jamboard into the service later this year. This will allow remote employees to participate in brainstorming sessions but workers returning to the office will also be able to use Jamboard right from their laptops or mobile devices.
Demand for video conferencing software has soared during the pandemic with users participating in more meetings than ever before. Google Meet has been playing catch up to Zoom and Microsoft Teams for some time now but these new features may finally allow it to become the preferred video conferencing service among organizations.
- We've also highlighted the best online collaboration tools
