COVID-19 Effect: Google Extends Hangouts Premium Features to All

As a consequence of COVID-19 Pandemic, organizations and institutions are initiating work from home for office employees and students to scale back the threat of spreading the novel virus. Therefore, Google is giving everybody unrestrained access to its advanced Hangouts Meet video-conferencing features until July 1, 2020. G Suite and G Suite for Education customers can use Hangouts Meet's premium functionality freed from charge.

Hangouts Meet is a component of Google's G Suite set of productivity tools, alongside Google Docs and Sheets. All G Suite customers can use Hangouts Meet, but now they can enable free access to more advanced features, including:

• Meetings for up to 250 users per call

• Live streaming for as far as 1,00,000 viewers within a domain

• Record meetings and save in Google Drive

  
  

These features were typically only available within the Enterprise and Enterprise for Education editions of G Suite.

Since the disease started spreading, COVID-19 has had numerous effects across global industries, with conferences being one among the more visible casualties. For instance, Google announced it’ll conduct its upcoming Cloud Next conference virtually, rather than asking people to attend the event physically.

Your Domain Admins are responsible to enable Meet video calling for your organization. You can then activate live streaming and recording.

• G Suite Basic, Business, and Nonprofit users: These advanced features are going to be cut by default and will further be enabled at the domain, OU, or group level

• G Suite for Education users: These advanced features are going to be cut by default and will further be enabled at the domain, OU, or group level

• G Suite Enterprise and Enterprise for Education users: All the premium features are available in your domain

  
  

With Google regularly improving the conferencing experience of G Suite Enterprise users, Hangouts Meet is one of the simplest conferencing tools in the market. Hangouts can meet the requirements of companies of any size, being perfect for handling small meetings with secure video chat, but also boasts of the capability to handle massive conferences for enterprise-level businesses. Using Google Hangouts, employees can still connect one-on-one among themselves or with clients, and even hold smaller video and audio conferences within the app. With Hangouts, all employees with access to G Suite and a computer or mobile device can cash in on Google’s messaging and conferencing platforms, regardless of the scope of their needs.

Google is continuously updating new features for schools to use, and Hangouts has the potential to be the cornerstone of collaboration and video communication for districts. Part of Google Apps for Education, Hangouts is consolidated real-time communication that permits not only chats, but video conferencing, video broadcasting, and integration with Google’s growing list of products and services for schools. Hangouts provide schools with not only real-time messaging and video, but also allows you to record a session, and download or post the video to YouTube. Hangouts have become the proper option for education, where platforms and access can vary.

To conclude, the use of Google’s Apps can seamlessly increase your organizations’ productive efficiency. Moreover, Google’s step to roll out premium features to all or any existing G Suite users must not be seen as philanthropy but as Corporate Social Responsibility.

In case you need help in setting up Hangouts Meet for your organization or institution, please reach out to our team of technical experts.