Google will end free access to paid features in both Google Meet and G Suite — both for Education and standard — on September 30. The changes include a wealth of feature removals, following months of free access first offered in April. And the changes cover the gamut, as highlighted in recent reports.
The change that will impact most users, in terms of free account features, are those to Google Meet rather than G Suite. Summarily, Google is set to remove access to unlimited time for virtual meet-ups. After September 30, free versions of the app and web service video calling app will be limited. Specifically, to just an hour.
It doesn’t appear as though Google is changing participant limits. Users should still be able to include up to 100 in a meeting. The search giant has also added a ton of new free features over the past several months. So this may not be too big a loss after all.
What changes are coming to free features in G Suite & G Suite for Education?
In terms of changes outside of Google Meet, for G Suite and G Suite for Education, access to those advanced features is being pulled too. Now, there are a lot more features being removed on this front, given that this is Google’s Enterprise suite of tools.
First, Google is ending free access to meetings with up to 250-participants. As with Google Meet, that will be limited back down to 100-participants. Live-streams with up to 100,000 people on a single domain are going away too. And, finally, Google is removing the ability to record meetings to Google Drive.
To continue accessing those features, users or their organizations will need to pay $25 per month. That’s a per-user cost.
As with the changes to Google Meet, this shouldn’t impact too many users too negatively. Particularly since the features were being offered in response to Coronavirus and primarily pertained to educational institutions. There are very few institutions that will require quite such a robust array of features.
So where do you go now?
With the incoming changes, it may be time for users to find an alternative set of tools. There is a wealth of free and affordable alternatives for video chats, for example. And some of those, such as Microsoft Teams, readily integrates with a full ecosystem of G Suite-like features and tools. All of which are centered around Microsoft’s widely-used Office apps and software.
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Source: ndroidheadlines.com