While the COVID-19 lockdown in South Africa has forced many people to work from home, it has not stopped companies from keeping in touch with their employees including having meetings.

With a number of people including the Health Department using conferencing apps like Zoom for their daily briefings, many other apps have also become available to close the gap the lockdown has created.

Google Cloud today announced it’s making Google Meet, Google’s premium video-conferencing solution, free for everyone, everywhere. Availability will roll 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.

These include features like scheduling and screen sharing, real-time captions, and layouts that adapt to your preference, including the expanded tiled view.

Javier Soltero, VP of G Suite says with the lines blurred between work and home, Google Meet has a number of features.

“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.”

There are a few ways individuals, teams and organisations can use Meet for free.

• Individual users: Once the roll out is complete, anyone with an email address will be able to use Meet for free via meet.google.com and the Meet mobile apps for iOS or Android.

• Teams that are not G Suite customers: For organizations that aren’t already G Suite customers, Google has announced a new edition called G Suite Essentials, which also includes Google Drive for easy and secure access to all of a team’s content, and Docs, Sheets and Slides for content creation and real-time collaboration.

• Existing G Suite customers: G Suite’s 6 million existing customers already have access to Meet. Admins simply need to enable Meet by following instructions outlined on our Help Center.

• Schools and higher education institutions: Meet is included in G Suite for Education, a suite of free Google apps tailored specifically for schools, which serves over 120 million students and teachers globally for high-quality virtual classes, PTA meetings, parent-teacher conferences, tutoring, and even school socials.

Faizel Patel 

(Twitter: @FaizelPatel143)