Google Meet's free features to expire on September 30

Google earlier this year announced it is making unlimited meetings free for all Google Meet users. The decision was taken seeing the surge and requirement of video meetings during this pandemic. The free extension is scheduled to end on September 30, and it looks like Google isn’t going to extend it.

Google confirmed to The Verge that it isn’t making any changes to the Meet promo, and advanced features. This means that post September 30, Google Meet features will go back to as it was for free users. With the free extension anyone with a Google account could make unlimited Meet calls. Once the promo is expired Google Meet free calls will be restricted to 60 minutes per meeting.

Google had also made some advanced features free for G Suite and G Suite for Education customers. These features include support for organising meetings with up to 250 participants, host live streams with up to 100,000 people, and save meeting recordings to Google Drive. Google’s promotion includes these features too which will also end on September 30. These advanced features are available only for G Suite’s Enterprise customers.

In addition to making some perks free, Google also aggressively pushed Meet on Gmail. It introduced a new Google Meet shortcut on Gmail’s desktop and mobile app. The shortcut lets users create a new meeting or join a meeting. The Google Meet shortcut is optional, and users can always turn it off. Google also rolled out a couple of new features to Meet such as background blur, tiled layout, and Chromecast support.