When it comes to video calling nowadays Zoom has become the most popular option
out there. But now that Google has announced that Google Meet 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 Bluejeans. 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 come 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 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 interface of Google Meet and Zoom and
how they compare when you go to meet google.com you see a pretty simple
screen you can immediately start a 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 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 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 us 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 a 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 a 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 screen in the window that pops up and
then click 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 gonna ask me you're
gonna ask me okay Josh tell me which one I 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
gonna 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 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 and if you liked
this video and found it helpful make sure you hit that thumbs up button below
and subscribe to the channel to see more videos on tech platforms and comparisons
between them like this one. Well that'll do it for me, for 6 Months Later, I'm
Josh Teder, thanks for watching.