The market for enterprise-grade videoconferencing platforms is about to get even more competitive, with the imminent arrival of Meet by Google Hangout. While Google hasn't officially announced the product just yet—but will likely do so at next week's Next user conference—sharp eyes at Techcrunch spotted a listing for it on the iTunes app store as well as a URL, meet.google.com. Here are the key details from Techcrunch's report:
Based on the screenshots and the App Store’s detail page, Meet is meant to serve as a business-friendly alternative to Hangouts, the company’s consumer-focused messaging, voice and video chat application.
Like Hangouts, Meet also offers group video calls, not just video chat, but in an expanded capacity.
Where Hangouts is limited to 10 people, Meet says it supports high-def video meetings with up to 30 participants.
It also includes other features aimed at making it easy to access these calls while on the go, including dial-in numbers for those who are traveling, links you can join with just a click, and integration with Gmail and Calendar for G Suite users.
It's not as if Meet by Google Hangout comes as a surprise. Earlier this year, Google retired the Hangout API, which was used by third-party developers to build add-ons with a social, consumer-user bent. In a FAQ document listing the change, Google said it would be focusing on enterprise scenarios for Hangout, leaving the one-to-one video calling app Duo as its consumer option.
The emergence of Google's new offering comes just weeks after Amazon Web Services launched its own enterprise-centric videoconferencing app, Chime.
"The enterprise unified communication market is extremely hot," says Constellation Research VP and principal analyst Alan Lepofsky. "Cisco is on a journey to modernize WebEx and Jabber via Spark. Citrix spun off GoToMeeting which was then acquired by LogMeIn. New startups such as Zoom, UberConference, Fuze and Join.me are gaining popularity. It makes sense that the suite vendors such as Microsoft—with Skype—and Google would be looking for ways to make sure users stay within their portfolio."
While customers have more and more choices for videoconferencing, Constellation believes that enterprise-focused tools must strike the right balance between delivering the obvious—crisp, low-cost video and audio—and giving users the ability to easily share documents and other content. That's because with consumer-oriented videoconferencing, the goal is making personal connections, rather than getting tasks done in a business context. (For more on this, read a recent blog post by Lepofsky.)
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