Google Meet to get a 60 minute call limit post September 30 for users

The Covid-19 outbreak has forced people across the globe to work from home. Amid the present scenario, Google has been rolling out features to its video-conferencing platform, Google Meet, that are aimed at helping its users stay connected during the lockdown. Earlier this week, the company announced that it will be rolling out Google Meet for free to all Gmail users. Now, Google says that it will enforce a 60 minute per call limit on the free tier of Google Meet conference calls post September 30, which is when the limit for the free tier ends.

"Last week we opened up the entire offering for all the consumers...For consumers, after September 30 while we would put a limit on the usage of number of minutes, right now it is unlimited..Consumers today can use [Meet for] unlimited [time], post September 30 there'll be a 60 minute limit for users," Managing Director of Google Cloud India, Karan Bajwa said in a statement to HT Tech.

Google has said that while it will place no limit on the number of calls, it would enforce a 60-minute time limit on the call lengths on the free tier of its service. The enterprise customers, on the other hand, will have no such limit. Notably, this is not the only difference between the enterprise and free tier of Google Meet. Apart from the limit on the length of the video call, the free tier users also get a capping on the number of participants who can join a conference call. While enterprise users can add up to 250 users in a call, for free tier users, this number is restricted to 100. Additionally, free tiers users cannot record a video call, while the enterprise users can.

Apart from Meet's latest announcement, the Google executive also talked about some of the features that recently made it to Google Meet. To give you a quick refresher, Google rolled out four new features to its video conferencing app. Firstly, it introduced support for tiled format on Meet. This would allow users to see up to 16 participants on their screens. In addition to this, the company also introduced support for low-light mode and a new noise-cancellation feature on Meet. Lastly, the company introduced a Chrome Tab feature on its video conferencing platform that would allow users to share high-quality audio and video content during a meeting.

Now, the Google Cloud India MD told us that all these features will also be available to the free tier users of Google Meet. "Features like noise-cancellation, those features are available for consumers as well. Just that for consumers you cannot record the sessions, for enterprises you can record the sessions...There are those modular differences that we have," he said.

And what about the security? Well, security features will remain the same for both the tiers. Simply said, free tier users of Google Meet will get the same features as enjoyed by enterprise users.

"Security and reliability, those features are extended to consumers as well," he added.