> We do not allow anonymous users (i.e., without a Google Account) to join meetings created by individual accounts.
If there is no guest accounts this will not be intresting for many.
If there is no guest accounts this will not be intresting for many.
While requiring a Google account to host a meeting makes some sense, requiring an account to join a meeting will simply mean too much friction and users will use another platform.
The equation is simple. Users use the first platform they can find where both sound and video works for every person they want to talk to. "Jim can't get into the call" soon leads to someone piping up "shall we try zoom instead?".
It's easy to see how this happened too - all Google engineers have Google accounts (for their work), so when testing this out, never encountered the issue.
I predict they'll change their stance in a few months when they see zoom still crushing them in user numbers, but by then it'll be too late - people will remember meet as that app which is "finicky to get to connect because everyone has to remember their password"
So this announcement doesn’t target family hangouts, but the product doesn’t either.
https://9to5google.com/2020/04/25/google-meet-zoom-competiti...
Also, from the article:
> In some cases, though, many are just wondering how this service hardly anyone had heard of became so popular.
Yeah, the first time I've heard of Zoom was when it landed on HN frontpage for doing some shady stuff on MacOS. Fast forward few months, my wife is asking me if I heard of it, because she'll have to start using it... I was similarly blindsided by the sudden rise of TikTok. These new platforms feel like coming completely out of the blue these days... or maybe I'm just older and don't pay attention anymore.
Its rise is a sign that the Internet has become just another commodity platform where success is bought, not earned.
It's that.
People make fun of me when tell them I like to talk to teens about technology. Why, they ask. Why? Because I learn about all these new upcoming platforms. I ask them "how do you get music now", "how do you share photos", "what do you use instead of Facebook".
And I learn about Snap, TikTok, Instagram, etc. long before they are popular.
These platforms all thrive on word of mouth. Teens still hang out mostly in person in school, so they have rapid word of mouth.
Talk to teens about technology. It will be enlightening.
That's a great point. I will talk to teenagers about tech more.
Plus, there was a time when the competition was things like Discord and Skype (force you to have an account... and a desktop application) and Facetime (forces you to have a phone number, and an app, and a particular brand of phone)
Speaking of that, my last experience with Google Meet in business setting was this: every other meeting someone from our team would disappear in the middle of a call and reappear a minute later. Reason? Google's bullshit random "you need to re-verify yourself and type in your password NOW NOW NOW!" prompt that logs you out until you comply. Since us developers only used our company GSuite accounts for Meet calls (all communication unfortunately went through Slack), the only time we'd get this prompt would be a few minutes into the call.