Google Integrates Google Meet Video Chat Platform Into Gmail And Calendar

A few weeks ago, Google renamed its Hangouts Meet video conferencing platform to Google Meet. Due to the corona crisis, the service quickly gained new users. The search engine company has now integrated the service into its own Gmail mail app.

Although the feature was only announced in the past few days, the first users of the mail platform already have the opportunity to use the integration of Google Meet. According to The Verge, a link can already be found in the left sidebar via which the video chat service can be opened. The user can choose whether to create a new meeting or to join an existing conversation.

Google account required to participate

In contrast to services such as Zoom, Meet requires a Google account to be able to attend a conference. Before joining a meeting, the host must send an invitation to the appropriate Google account or add the participant themselves. The integration into the Gmail app is quite practical, as the invitations are sent to the email addresses anyway.

At the moment, the new feature is still being rolled out, so the function will probably only be seen by a small number of users.

In addition to the Gmail mail application, the calendar app will also receive support for Google Meet. That was in the official product blog a few days ago of the search engine group. In the future, it will, therefore, be possible to join a Meet conference directly using the calendar. The use of the premium features of Google Meet is free until September 30th. After this period, the length of video conferences in the free version is limited to just 60 minutes.