Enduring another company-wide conference call on your senior work laptop could soon be a lot less painful thanks to several new Google Meet updates.
The video conferencing platform has announced several improvements for streamed video conferencing within a larger business or organization.
The updates are specifically aimed at those with older or less powerful computing devices, and take advantage of Google Meet’s recently introduced ultra-low latency viewing experience, which appears to put much less strain on older machines.
Google Meet Live Stream
Among the new updates, revealed in a Google Workspace update blog post, are a number of tweaks to help organizers and administrators make and manage their calls more seamlessly. This includes a new join screen experience that features a quick access button that meeting participants can use to join a live stream if they prefer that experience to the regular call.
Meeting hosts will now also be able to start the live stream from any ongoing Google Meet call, even if it wasn’t originally planned to have this feature, with a link to the new live stream provided instantly for sharing.
Google Meet also says that video streams will now start even faster when joining live streams with large audiences, and that viewing live streams from the Google Meet mobile app is now supported on Android and iOS devices.
Elsewhere, viewers of a live stream will now be able to see the audience size (including call participants and viewers) in the top left live stream indicator window.
The changes have started rolling out now, with live streaming available for Google Workspace Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Enterprise Essentials Plus, Teaching and Learning Upgrade, and Education Plus customers.
Live-streamed meetings can be viewed using Google Workspace Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Starter, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Standard, and Teaching and Learning. Upgrade, Education Plus, Essentials Starter, and Essentials users, but not available to users with personal Google accounts.
