IT Blog

If you find yourself leading a meaningful percentage of your life these days via videoconference rather than in person—and you probably do—you’ve got plenty of options. One of them is Google Meet. It’s a solid contender. But it comes with a built-in stumbling block that, for many people, has made it a nonstarter: It isn’t free. Instead, only paying customers of Google’s G Suite productivity service have been able to host meetings.

Now Google is removing that barrier with a new tier of Meet that’s available to anyone who has a Google account. As with Zoom’s free version, meetings are limited to 100 participants. But Meet’s maximum meeting length for freeloaders will be an hour, vs. 40 minutes for Zoom. And Google won’t begin enforcing that limit until Oct. 1, so people stuck at home during the pandemic don’t have to keep an eye on the clock. (This free version will be rolling out over the coming weeks, the company says.)