Google Meet vs Zoom: Here are 5 ways Google is trying to beat Zoom

While Zoom supports up to 49 participants in a group call, Google Meet supports up to 100 participants.

Zoom now has 300 million subscribers. (REUTERS)

The Covid-19 outbreak has forced employees to work from home amid the lockdown enforced in various countries across the globe to prevent the virus from spreading. Amid the present circumstances, video conferencing apps such as Zoom and Google Meet, have become a staple way for people to connect with their colleagues and carry out their day to day work.

Both the apps have witnessed a sharp increase in their user base as well. While Google Meet has witnessed a 25% surge in usage compared to January 2020, Zoom's user base has swelled from 10 million users back in December 2019 to 200 million in March 2020 to 300 million in April 2020. Interestingly, Zoom has been steadily increasing its user base despite being marred by security scandals in the past couple of weeks.

Now, Google has rolled out a bunch of new features that allow it to compete with Zoom. So, here's how Google is trying to beat Zoom:

-- Zoom allows users to add up to 49 participants in a conference call. This has prompted other companies to increase the total number of participants that they can add in a group audio or video call. For instance, Google Duo, last month, increased the group calling limit to 12 participants. Google Meet, on the other hand, already supports up to 100 participants in a group call. Now, the company has rolled out a new feature that allows users to see upto 16 participants in a tile-like format. Previously, the video conferencing platform allowed users to see only four participants at a time.

-- Another way Google Meet is beating Zoom is by constantly improving the video quality. While Zoom has been focussed on fixing its security issues, Google has been enhancing the features it already has. Now, Google has rolled out a new feature called Chrome tab that improves the quality of video content and audio as users present their screens.

-- Here's another one. Correct lighting is one of the key factors to keep in mind when using any app's video conferencing feature. This is particularly important when participants need to focus on more than just another participant in a group call. This can sometimes be adjusted by adjusting the lighting of the room. However, that may not always work. Now, Google is deploying its artificial intelligence prowess to fix this issue. Simply said, the company is using AI to automatically adjust the lighting in your video to make it more visible to other participants in the conference call.

-- Now comes the noise. When working from home, background noise, like that of the dogs barking or the occasional honk of a vehicle or that of kids playing in the background can sometimes disrupt meetings. Google is fixing that -- yes, digitally fixing everything -- by filtering out all the background distractions. This feature is being rolled out to G-Suite Enterprise and G Suite Education on the web in the coming weeks.

-- Now an interesting bit. Google has rolled out advanced Google Meet features to all G Suite and G Suite for Education customers globally until September 30, 2020. This includes the ability to add up to 250 participants in a call, live streaming for up to 100,000 viewers within a domain and ability to record meetings and save them to Google Drive. In case you are wondering, these features are not available in Zoom. This gives organisations are particularly interesting incentive to pick Meet over Zoom.