Google Meet: Video meetings built on a secure foundation, soon free for everyone

Google Cloud today announced it’s making Google Meet, Google’s premium video-conferencing solution, free for everyone with availability rolling out over the coming weeks.

Starting in early May, anyone with an email address can sign up for Meet and enjoy many of the same features available to G Suite’s business and education users, such as simple scheduling and screen sharing, real-time captions, and layouts that adapt to your preference, including the expanded tiled view.

“With the lines blurred between work and home, Google Meet can offer the polish needed for a work meeting, a tiled view for your online birthday party and the security needed for a video call with your doctor,” said Javier Soltero, VP of G Suite. “We’re in the middle of a significant worldwide shift impacting communication from the workplace to schools to the home. People want familiar, secure tools that they can use across all facets of their lives.”

Google has invested years in making Meet a secure and reliable video conferencing solution that’s trusted by schools, governments and enterprises around the world, and in recent months has accelerated the release of top-requested features to make it even more helpful.

Whether it’s hospitals supporting patients via telehealth, banks working with loan applicants, retailers assisting customers remotely, or manufacturers interacting safely with warehouse technicians, businesses across every industry are using Meet to stay connected.

Google Meet: Built on a secure foundation

Meet is designed, built and operated to be secure at scale. Meet is hosting 3 billion minutes of video meetings and adding roughly 3 million new users every day. And as of last week, Meet’s daily meeting participants surpassed 100 million.

Privacy and security are paramount, no matter if it’s a doctor sharing confidential health information with a patient, a financial advisor hosting a client meeting, or people virtually connecting with each other for graduations, holidays, and happy hours.

Google’s approach to security is simple: make products safe by default. Meet was designed to operate on a secure foundation, providing the protections needed to keep users safe, their data secure, and their information private.

Safety measures

Here are just a few of the default-on safety measures:

• A strong set of host controls such as the ability to admit or deny entry to a meeting, and mute or remove participants, if needed.
• Anonymous users are not allowed to join meetings created by individual accounts.
• Meet meeting codes are complex by default and therefore resilient to brute-force “guessing.”
• Meet video meetings are encrypted in transit, and all recordings stored in Google Drive are encrypted in transit and at rest.
• The service does not require plugins to use Meet on the web. It works entirely in Chrome and other modern browsers, so it’s less vulnerable to security threats.
• Meet users can enroll their account in Google’s Advanced Protection Program.
• Google Cloud undergoes regular rigorous security and privacy audits for all its services.
• Your Meet data is not used for advertising, and Google doesn’t sell your data to third parties.
• Google operates a highly secure and resilient private network that encircles the globe and connects their data centers to each other—ensuring that your data stays safe.