Google Meet is one of the most amazing video conferencing tools developed by Google, formerly known as Google Hangouts. Google Meet allows users to directly join the meetings from an email invitation or calendar event from a phone, computer, or conference room.
There are several other video conferencing platforms available. So before choosing Meet, you must consider Google meet advantages and disadvantages. The advantages of Google Meet are free and paid versions are available, beautiful user interface, greater user experience, and works in integration with different apps.
The other advantages are greater audio and video quality, excellent layout, strong security and privacy, robust tracking and analytics, etc. On the contrary, the disadvantages of Google meet are limited features, screen sharing restrictions, displaying the participants in a limited number, etc.
Today’s guide will shed some light on Google’s advantages and disadvantages. And we will also give a verdict on whether Google Meet is worth using or not. So keep reading this guide till the end!
Google Meet Advantages And Disadvantages
Google Meet is a video conferencing service that makes video conferencing, attending online sessions, project discussions, etc., easier for people.
Nowadays, people living in remote areas can attend international meetings through video conferences in Google Meet. Meet comes with several advantages and disadvantages. Now we will discuss all those in detail:
Advantages Of Google meet
Google Meet is used for conducting meetings, exams, webinars, online classes, and competitions. During the Covid Pandemic, people understood the advantages of Google Meet when people started working from home.
Meet makes everyone’s job more accessible through its easy-to-use service. However, the substantial advantages of Meet are:
1. Free Version & Paid Versions
All Google users can use Google Meet for free. Up to 100 participants can participate in the video conference using the accessible version of Google Meet. And 60 minutes is the time limit for meetings for free users.
Google Meet is also available in its paid version. The paid versions are part of services and apps within Google Workspace. The starting price of the paid version is $6.00 for each user per month. This price is considerably lower.
However, a more expensive plan is also available. You have the opportunity to unlock more features with an expensive plan.
2. 100 Participants
Google offers a free Google Meet service for everybody. Up to 100 participants can freely attend the virtual meetings in Google. And you must confess that participating 100 people freely in a video meeting is a great opportunity.
So for your small business meeting, you can freely use this tool as long as needed. If you have to set any big meeting and exceed the limits, you must buy the other pricing plan of Google that is also cost-effective.
Based on whichever Google Workspace version you are using, you can have 250 participants in the meeting.
3. User Experience
Google Meet’s most significant advantage is that it’s easy to use. The meeting joining is simple, like tapping or clicking on a link. Google Meet platform is also available through a dedicated native or web app for the Microsoft Windows, macOS, iPad OS, iOS, and Android operating systems.
Clicking the Google Meet link will redirect you to an app or an actual meeting. However, the Google Meet platform’s overall feel or look is minimal and clean. Like the other Google services and products, the developers developed and designed Google Meet.
Thus the user will experience a smooth journey with Google Meet and Google Workspace.
4. Integration With Other Google Services & Productivity Tools
Google Meet includes comprehensive interactivity and productivity tools. And for this reason, it is greater than other messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, Google Hangouts, Viber, and WhatsApp.
Meet’s screen-sharing feature allows a speaker to present presentations, spreadsheets, documents, and browser tabs to participants. Some more features of Google Meet include file and image sharing, real-time decision-making polling, and text-based chat.
Google Meet integrates with Google Calendar and Google Contacts for meeting participation or one-click calls. However, the Google Workspace account’s paid version enables you to unlock more features.
The features include speech recognition, real-time closed captioning, encrypted calls, noise cancellation, etc. You can also unlock more tools using the paid version of Google Meet.
The paid version gives you access to Google Drive, a note-sharing app, Google Docs, survey forms, etc. Also, Google Meet’s enterprise plans allow meeting recordings that are automatically stored in the user’s Google Drive account.
5. Audio & Video Quality
The default video setting of Google Meet is 360P resolution for both the outgoing and incoming video feed. However, Meet allows you to adjust this resolution to 720P. Individually the users can change the resolution to receive and send feeds.
Therefore Google Meet provides users with better control over data consumption. Also, another considerable advantage of Google Meet is that it allows a large number of participants in the conference.
However, video performance and quality depend on hardware capabilities, internet speed, and other factors. The performance issue with Google Meet is minimal. Therefore Meet’s overall performance remains robust compared to other competitors like Microsoft Teams and Zoom.
6. Interface & Layout
Google Met offers some excellent interfaces and layouts to its users. Meet allows the users or participants of the meeting to automatically select the layout. And on the larger window, only the active speaker will be visible or displayed by Meet.
And some participants will be on the screen’s left side in the small windows. The active speaker, pinned feed, or presentation will complete the entire screen during the meeting.
When a presentation starts, it will be displayed on a larger tile. And Meet will display the most active participants on the sidebar layout.
7. Security & Privacy
Google Meet ensures the highest security and privacy for the participants and users. Participants don’t have access to join the meetings without a Google account. Ultimately this system reduces the possibility of access of the unidentified participants.
By default, Google Meet’s all transmitted data is encrypted. Moreover, this platform works according to the IETF security standards.
Small and medium-sized businesses can face several cyber security challenges. But during the video conferencing, Google Meet ensures security and privacy for the participants.
Moreover, Google Meet lets you secure your account with security keys, 2SV, SMS & Google Authenticator, and Google Prompt. Also, you can enroll in the Advanced Protection Program of the Google app for more privacy and security.
8. Tracking & Analytics
Through the Meet Quality tool, you can get your Google Meet Meeting’s data track and statistics. The Meet Quality tool stores data for 30 days. And this tool allows you to monitor timelines, meeting information, participants, and more.
But one problem is this feature is not accessible by all the Meet users. A host from the Admin settings can access their meeting log.
Moreover, the host can track the participant’s numbers in real-time using the attendance tracking feature. However, you must need a paid G Suite or Google Meet Plan to access the meeting log.
Disadvantages Of Google Meet
Google Meet comes with many tremendous advantages compared to its other competitors. But you can’t overlook the drawbacks of Google Meet.
While considering a platform for video conferencing, you must know all its advantages and disadvantages. Now below, we will explain the cons of Google Meet. So keep reading:
1. Limited Features
Google Meet is a perfect option among the available video conferencing tools due to its high-security level. But by comparing the features of Meet with another similar platform like Zoom, you can understand its drawbacks.
For example, compared to Zoom, the features of Google Meet come with a set of constraints. No waiting room is available for the Google Meet participants. But this feature is available in Zoom. So here, Google Meet is one step behind Zoom.
Another constraint with Google Meet is that the whiteboard is unavailable. Compared to other video telephony applications and services like Zoom, the list of features in Google Meet is not up to the mark.
Therefore Google Meet should improve and extend the list of features for better interactivity, productivity, and remote collaboration.
2. Screen Sharing Restrictions
Google Meet offers an outstanding feature named screen sharing. But the limitation is that at a time the user can share only one screen. The other way to complete it is to add two windows to the screen before sharing the content.
In this way, the host can present more information to the participants. Unfortunately, you can find doing this boring during your important meeting.
3. Display the Participants In A Limited Number
Google Meet at once in a tile view can display 16 participants. At first chance, this can look impressive. But if you compare this feature with other online video conferencing tools like Zoom, you will feel the difference.
Zoom display’s the meeting’s 49 participants. So it is better than Google Meet. If you simultaneously want to monitor more users, Zoom provides better options. And this is a drawback of Google Meet.
4. Blank Presentation Problems
During the screen sharing, sometimes the host faces that the screen is blank to all the participants.
Also, the loading time becomes greater when the host uses Microsoft PowerPoint, Keynote presentations, or commences with a slide show. The blank screen creates annoyance among the participants of the meetings.
5. Users from Domain Outside Are Disallowed
Majorly the host or creator can restrict or approve the participant’s requests to join a meeting. If you request to join the meeting and the meeting’s host is unavailable, you won’t be able to join the meeting.
6. Can Be Taxing On System Resources & Hardware
There is an optimized app for iPads and iOS and Android operating systems. Still, there is no native desktop or dedicated app for Google Meet. The platform is only accessible via the web browser for the desktop operating system like macOS, Windows, and Chrome OS.
However, the problem is the user experience quality of Google Meet still depends on the particular device’s hardware capabilities. Hence Google Meet’s other disadvantage is that it consumes hardware resources considerably.
If your device has random access memory and an outdated processor, it will have a tough time running a video conference. With 5 participants, the short video calls will require a dual-core processor and 3 GB of RAM.
However, if there are more than 5 participants, then for the large conferences, the video will require RAM of at least 4GB.
To make your concept clear about the Google Meet advantages and disadvantages, we recommend you watch this video:
Is Google Meet Worthy Of Using?
Google Meet is the part of the entire Google Workspace Suite’s apps and tools. And this is the tremendous advantage of Meet over other messaging apps and video conferencing platforms like Zoom.
If you pay for the Meet service, it implies that, ultimately, you are paying for the other services and products of Google Workspace. Moreover, Google Meet ensures an overall uniform and seamless user experience by integrating with Google’s tools and apps.
When considering the drawback, there need to be certain features in this platform that the other competitors offer. But still, Google Meet has room to extend its features to improve virtual meeting productivity and remote collaboration.
More specifically, for small–to medium–sized businesses, Google Meet is an ideal option because of its competitive price. So, in the end, we can conclude that Google Meet is worthy of use despite having some particular drawbacks.
End Note
So at the end of this article, you already know Google Meet advantages and disadvantages. After in-depth research, we found that the advantages of Google Meet are more significant than the disadvantages of Google Meet.
Among all the popular video conferencing apps, Google Meet has become one of the standard solutions. Whether you are chit-chatting with family or friends or entering a business meeting, Google Meet is undoubtedly a viable choice.
Not all pieces of software are perfect. So while using Google Meet, you may also encounter some problems. But if you overlook those issues for a second, you can’t have any other choice than Google Meet.
