I don't have the mental space to waste filling it with details of another Google communication product they are going to discontinue in a year.
And really with video conferencing product, I don't get the whole trope of "but they might discontinue it." - the utility is immediate in terms of the calls that you make with it, and time boxed till by when a call ends.
There is buy-in even for a chat app. I often have to shuffle browsers, may or may not have to install something, have to judge if the other person is interested in trying new software. Does everyone have a Google account? If I'm joining someone else's meeting, what's the process? Is there a meeting id? Password? URL?
I think "mental space" is quite appropriate.
This isn't unique to Google; it applies to any kind of single sign on with lots of different products. You're always better off maintaining separate browser profiles so you can seamlessly switch between them than forcing everything into a single profile and endlessly logging out and logging in on all these different sites. I used to do this with Facebook too back when I was using a different account for work development.
And there's also the "poor man's" version of this which even many non-technical users know about, which is to use Chrome for one account and Firefox for another.
When Firefox transitioned their plugin format they dropped support for over a year (after receiving more than a year of deprecation warning). At the time it require a separate installed plugin (which defeats most of the purpose of integrating with the browser). Safari support has also been spotty.
I really hate Google's account system. I don't even use Google, but find myself juggling 4 or 5 accounts for work, school, family. If I go to `classroom.google.com` I get a "Verify it's you <account I don't intend to use>". I'm expected to click "Next" and click a few more times before I can select the right account.
I don't have direct experience with Teams (I assume it's similar to Google). Being all-in is clearly the easiest solution--using it every day, having it as your only video solution, having an account and staying signed in. The annoyance is the friction that it can't be your only solution and when it's one of many there's a lot of mental energy to jump through the hoops.
Zoom does have a web version and the native app is almost inappropriately too easy to install. Joining a video chat just means having a meeting ID or clicking a URL.
Not true at all. I have a bunch of recurring meetings in my calendar, and each one has a Zoom link in it.
If I wanted to switch to Meet, I'd have to redo each of those invites with a new link, and then hope everyone noticed the update.
They won't, so I'll spend the first few weeks individually pinging people reminding them of the new conference software, and then waiting 10 minutes for them to download, install, and configure it before joining us.
And then if I decide to switch back, I get to do it all over again.
If you use Google Calendar, I believe a Meet link is automatically added by default.
> They won't, so I'll spend the first few weeks individually pinging people reminding them of the new conference software, and then waiting 10 minutes for them to download, install, and configure it before joining us.
That doesn't make sense. Meet is done exclusively through the web browser.
> And then if I decide to switch back, I get to do it all over again.
What stops you from having both so you can try both? Those Zoom links aren't obsolete the moment you add a Meet link.
You should edit them out though, otherwise you are going to have people click the link they always used to click.
For a new event, yes. For an existing event, I'd have to replace the existing Zoom link.
> That doesn't make sense. Meet is done exclusively through the web browser.
You're assuming the person I want to meet with already has a Google account.
> What stops you from having both so you can try both? Those Zoom links aren't obsolete the moment you add a Meet link.
Because of the confusion I mentioned before. You'll end up with some people in the old meeting and some in the new.
I speak all of this from experience of being in a corporate environment that moved from WebEx to Hangouts. It took weeks to get everyone to switch over and was a ton of work updating all the recurring meetings.
But the overall point is that the switching cost is much higher than just the time boxed meeting.
Re: your corporate switching experience ... this is a failure of the company culture, not a technology problem.
That's not actually an indication that there won't be setup issues. Every new machine my Meet breaks until I hit a bunch of OK boxes and know the secret trick to kill Chrome and restart it before Meet can actually successfully access the camera and share screens and the like.
Had it screw up presentations before where I got a new machine, tried to share a demo window, and of course it wouldn't work until I logged off the call, killed Chrome, and got back in. Big waste of time. Seen the same issue hit other coworkers with new issued laptops.
I suspect only the tech crowd notices this and the general public just gobble everything up, though. We can all just think quietly "ok another experiment, no thanks" and watch where the chips fall in 6 months.