Google Meet has a very different philosophy from the Zoom platform.

Google values “Collaboration Equity.” Google defines this as, “the ability for everyone to contribute regardless of location, role, experience level, language, and device preference.”

What does this mean? A lot of things really:

• While a moderator can mute you, you can always unmute yourself if you need to share something urgently. (Of course, moderators can still boot unruly attendees from the meeting).
• Meet is designed to work on a plain web browser on computers–there is no special application to download for optimal performance. (Of course, portable iOS and Android devices need a free app from their respective stores because their web browsers are not usually as capable).

1. Live captioning of content in 5 languages (currently). If you’re attending a meeting not in your native language, you can now see it in English as well as one of French, German, Brazilian Portuguese, and Spanish (more languages to come).
2. Breakout rooms for smaller group interaction during a large gathering.
3. Attendance reporting (probably more appropriate for educational and professional development events)
4. Hand raising
5. Enhanced reporting and audits for organizations to get analytics of how Meet is being used.
6. See what your are presenting in the meeting pane. Previously, you could only see the actual window that contained your PowerPoint or other content. Now, you can see what your colleagues are seeing, or not.
7. More options for pinning or unpinning content.
8. You now have a control panel across the bottom of the page with everything in one place — and more control on how to tile participants.
9. Google’s AI agents also minimize data use while you’re on a roaming connection and also adjust your light to balance out backlighting.
10. Coming Soon:
    1. Pin multiple video feeds to the screen. I’m assuming this means you’ll be able to watch the Habs play in one feed and the Edmonton Elks in another at the same time.
    2. Autozoom to resize and center your image squarely in your tile.