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Comment by CydeWeys | Hacker News Reader

> The answer is: It just works.

I've actually found the opposite to be true. Google Meet is an example of a product that just works. Zoom, by contrast, pushes you very heavily into downloading and installing an application on every device you want to use it with, and provides a secondary degraded experience in the browser if you find the right link to use it (which you have to do EVERY SINGLE TIME; there doesn't seem to be a way to permanently opt out of the "install this application" nag flow).

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For many people, the criteria by which to judge VC software might be quality of audio and video, ability to deal with low bandwidth, and the ability to run a functional meeting with it. In fact, for many people, while installing an application might be a one-time pain, if it offers better service in some way, it's probably seen as a benefit, not a drawback.

We have Hangouts Meet free at work, available for every single meeting with a single click. Zoom is also quietly available, but we're disincentivized to use it, because the company has to pay extra. We have to jump through hoops to get access. Yet since the COVID WFH revolution, Zoom is becoming more and more widespread. Because, as a VC solution, it just works, and works noticeably better than Hangouts Meet.

I feel like VC software will just get more funding by pushing apps/downloads because it makes it easier to collect more data, serve unblocked ads, and nag with notifications for engagement. Not a startup but I'm convinced mobile Reddit is slow and missing features on purpose for just this reason. All they had to do for a perfect mobile experience was enhance .compact a little.

I can vouch for this. Organizations are adopting left and right - both in the healthcare and food industry. Why is zoom getting more traction than google hangouts ever had?

No way to view anything in the right side panes (chat and members) at the same time yet when you do view them your bottom pane with the meeting controls auto hides (???). Some panes auto-hide some panes don't. After about 6 people video has a tendency to hang (even if all users are on a gigabit connection). No way to request control of someone else's screen. Also for large conferences (100+) Meet just doesn't have the standard options at all. It's smart enough to mute everyone by default and (I think) disable video automatically now but it's nothing like the features most others offer for large meetings.

Outside the one or two time app install (depending how many devices the user has) Zoom actually has everything you need to get a meeting done. Need a multi user whiteboard? There. Need to have someone control someone elses stuff? There. Need to hold a large meeting and have one at a time raise hand questions? There. Most importantly these don't get in the way of "need to just talk with someone else" being there and just working as well.

No meeting app is perfect for everybody but Meet lacks a lot of flexibility to get it's simplicity and it's not all that much simpler than Zoom for it.

I think you're mistaking "It just works" for "It just works in the way I want it to"

Unfortunately if you go with the suggested methods for using zoom, it is very easy to join a meeting

You're using the exact same definition. "It just works" for you, so you're saying it just works, and you're discounting that it doesn't just work for me and many others who don't want to install software just for fricking videoconferencing, when plenty of other apps do it well in-browser without constantly nagging you to install something thereby making you feel like a second-class user.

Of course "it just works" is a subjective, personal opinion.

> provides a secondary degraded experience in the browser if you find the right link to use it (which you have to do EVERY SINGLE TIME

I wrote a browser plugin to do this:

https://github.com/arkadiyt/zoom-redirector

Fantastic. Just installed it now, will give it a go.

I guess I'd rather install an open source browser plugin to do this than a closed-source proprietary application, but ideally I wouldn't have to do either!

Anyway, thanks for the link. It didn't even occur to me to look for something like that.

For bigger classes Meet is just not good enough. Unless it changed recently they've got a limit of 20 connections per meeting. Also you can't mute everyone apart from you easily (you have to do it one by one) which adds another problem.

Until July 1 the premium version of Hangouts Meet is made available for free to you if your university has access to Meet. This means up to 250 people in a single meeting:

"Starting this week, we will begin rolling out free access to our advanced Hangouts Meet video-conferencing capabilities to all G Suite and G Suite for Education customers globally including:

- Larger meetings, for up to 250 participants per call

- Live streaming for up to 100,000 viewers within a domain

- The ability to record meetings and save them to Google Drive " [1]

Zoom definitely has better crowd control (for lack of a better term) than Meet does. Meet does have some relatively unused but helpful features though like the questions that you can ask as an audience member and upvote others' questions. Can be very helpful in a lecture.

[1]: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/g-suite/helping-busin...

Edit. Add reference, quote.

It looks like Zoom started in 2013. Google Hangouts was only released in March 2017. When trying to use Hangouts I've had to jump through different browsers because the one I was using wasn't supported.

I also think accounts are a friction. Even though we all used Google services, with Zoom if I needed to hop onto my phone so I could listen in while running an errand I would have needed to authenticate if I was using Meet. I also don't think I've ever been in a Google video chat with more than 2 people. With Zoom we did company meetings without issue.

Google started developing it more for enterprise use in 2017 but Hangouts has been around since 2013.

Maybe it was the friction around plugin deprecation (was it Firefox?) combined with the treadmill of deprecations and transitions to new products; within the past year or two I've had to jump between Safari, Firefox, and Chrome to join a meeting--also requiring a separate plugin install. Over many previous years Zoom worked just fine as a standalone app.

Hangouts Meet is for G Suite users only. No way to use it for free.

in free gmail calendar, click create a new meeting, add conference, pick hangouts, done?

Wonder why this is apparently not working? I don't pay for gmail. I'm not using it in a domain.

The Hangouts video meetings you have access to do in public Gmail/Calendar are not the same product as "Hangouts Meet", which is only available with a G-Suite account. Meet is definitely a more polished experience.

I also use the commercial google hangouts, I struggle to think of the differences. I know there's the annoying (must be in the domain to join a meeting without being invited) thing. Uh, is recording only in the paid product? I'm just not seeing it. Maybe there's some limit in the free product? it works for just my group of friends.

I thought Hangouts "classic" was phased out already. But they have extended its life until June 2020. Not many differences with meet, but not available forever.

I'd guess they'll take pity on us and keep it alive longer. Meanwhile in that time they'll introduce 2 new texting schemes plus announce EOL hangouts yet again and then extend it ;-)

You could have 6-10 users in hangouts back in 13 for free.

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