Google Meet

What's the best thing about Meet? There's nothing to install. Someone sends a link, you click it, and you're on the call in a browser tab.

That works in Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Safari, on a Mac, a Windows PC, a Chromebook or Linux. People on Hacker News bring up exactly this when they compare it with Zoom.

The free version is generous. Anyone with a Google Account can host up to 100 people for 60 minutes. One-on-one calls and mobile calls have no time limit at all.

So for "call mum every sunday", you'll never pay.

It also lives inside the rest of Google. You can join straight from a Doc, a Sheet or a Slides deck, and Google Calendar can add a Meet link to an event.

Pay for Workspace and meetings stretch to 24 hours. From Business Standard up, Gemini takes the notes and writes the summary.

The paid features are locked inside a bigger purchase. You can't buy "Meet Pro". You buy Google Workspace, or Google One Premium if it's only you.

And the cheapest plan leaves out what you'd upgrade for. Business Starter at $7 has no recording, no noise cancelling and no Gemini notes. Those start at Business Standard, which is $14.

It's heavy on your computer. This came up more than once on Hacker News. One person said they replaced a 2021 laptop because it couldn't keep up with Meet any more.

Google's help page asks for just a dual-core processor and 2 GB of memory. Going by those comments, the minimum and "comfortable" are a long way apart.

There's no desktop app. On a computer it's always a browser tab, and tabs get lost.

One more for free meetings: guests need a Google Account, or the host has to let each one in.

Free covers most people. 100 participants, 60 minutes for group calls, no limit one-on-one.

After that you're buying Google Workspace, per person, on a one-year commitment. Business Starter is $7 a month: 100 people and 24-hour meetings, and that's about it for Meet.

Business Standard is $14. It's the one we'd pick if meetings matter to you, because it adds recordings saved to Drive, noise cancelling, Gemini notes and room for 150.

Business Plus is $22, with 500 people and attendance tracking. Enterprise goes up to 1,000 and you have to talk to sales.

Some small print. The Business plans stop at 300 users, and there's a 14-day trial. For now new customers get up to 50% off the first 3 months, and nonprofits that qualify can get Workspace for nothing.

Also, Google shows different plans and prices in different countries. So what you see on their site might not match ours.

Google Meet has 4.8 on the App Store from about 2.3 million ratings.

A warning about the written reviews, though. Most of the ones Apple shows are over three years old, and several are from when the app was called Duo. So they're about calling family, not about work meetings.

What do people love? Calling across the iPhone and Android divide. One couple, an iPhone and a Pixel, video call on it most nights, and kids use it to see a parent who lives somewhere else.

The unhappy ones talk about glitches. Calls that won't connect, or being kicked out the second they answer. A 2024 reviewer found the iPhone app plain confusing.

Hacker News is more about work. People like that it runs in any browser with nothing to install. They don't like what it does to their laptop fans.

And one commenter lost 20 minutes trying to share a screen with their mother on an iPad. Safari wouldn't do it.