Free Google Meet group calls time limit slashed; now, talk for just 60-min

If you are a Google Workspace customer, that is, you have an enterprise account, this limit will remain unchanged for you.

Google Meet free calls are over. Instead of extending deadline further, Google has rolled back this Google Meet benefit. Now, free Google Meet users will be able to host only one-on-one calls for up to 24 hours via their personal computers. (Google)

Google Meet free group calls time limit: Good times are over on Google Meet. Now, get set for a bad experience as Google does a U-turn. A number of benefits for Google Meet were announced last year when the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted the way the world worked. One of these benefits included removing the group calls time limit made on free accounts. Over a year after making this announcement, Google is rolling back these benefits. The company today announced that it will impose a cap on how long the calls can last. In effect, Google Meet free group calls time limit is no longer well, limitless, it has been cut drastically.

Google in April last year made its video conferencing platform, Google Meet, available for free to all its users. Its hand was forced to a large extent by rivals like Zoom, which were gaining widespread popularity then because of the many benefits it was providing to users. At the time, Google had said that it wouldn't enforce a 60-minute time limit on calls until September 30, 2020. Later, the company extended that deadline for group calls that could run all day long to March 31, 2021. This deadline was extended again to June 30, 2021.

Google Meet free group calls time limit slapped on these users: Now, Google, instead of extending this deadline further, has rolled back this Google Meet benefit. The company, via an update on its support page, has announced that free Google Meet users will be able to host only one-on-one calls for up to 24 hours via their personal computers. But this is not true for group calls. The company said that calls with three or more participants can go a maximum of up to 60 minutes. It is worth noting that users with personal Google accounts can have a maximum of 100 participants in a video call. “Tip: At 55 minutes, everyone gets a notification that the call is about to end. To extend the call, the host can upgrade their Google account. Otherwise, the call will end at 60 minutes,” Google wrote in its support page.

Google Meet free group calls time limit not imposed on these customers: But if you are a Google Workspace customer, that is, you have an enterprise account, this limit will remain unchanged for you. The company said that Workspace users can host one-on-one calls and group calls with three or more participants for up to 24 hours without any change. The upgrade mentioned by the company is the $9.99 ( ₹745 approx.) per month for Workspace Individual tier that launched in five countries, which includes the US, Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Japan. After upgrading to this plan, users will be able to host group calls running up to 24 hours without any restrictions.