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Zoom has been a go-to service for people during the COVID-19 pandemic, since stay-at-home orders began taking effect in early March. You can hardly go online without hearing someone in your circle posting about a recent Zoom meeting. However, with Zoom’s recent security issues, people are looking towards other video meeting platforms to fulfill their social distancing needs and competitors are answering that call.
For weeks, other video call services have been waving their arms in the distance begging people to remember they exist. Zoom’s recent fall from grace is a wide-open door for competitors. Among them are Skype and Google who have both recently launched new features with the goal of enticing users to their platforms.
Skype’s new feature is called Meet Now. It allows users to video chat or start a meeting without signing-up for an account. Meet Now utilizes all of Skypes standard meeting features such as screen share, recording, background blur, and chat functions. It is a good low-committal choice if you are looking for a tool to use on your laptop, but if you want a mobile version there is a catch. In order to use the mobile version of Meet Now you do need to download the Skype App, although you don’t need to have a Microsoft account to use the app. Depending on how you feel about adding another app to your phone, it could be the way to go.
Google isn’t launching another product, rather they are working to bring some of the features people have loved on competitor platforms to their own arsenal. Google Meet is their video call service currently available for use on Chrome, Firefox, and Edge.
It is rolling out a new gallery view that looks a whole lot like Zoom. Before the change, Google Meet users could only see four participants at a time on-screen. The new gallery view will allow users to see up to sixteen participants at one time. It’s still less than Zoom’s capacity, but this is a step up. If you’re meeting with a small or mid-sized group, Google Meet just became a more viable option.
The great battle for top video call service isn’t going to stop anytime soon. Although some states are beginning to relax their stay-at-home orders, many employers are keeping employees home and limiting the amount of people in the office. This situation has been a huge opportunity for companies to stretch the limits of their remote working capacities and not all of them are in a rush to return to the way things were before.
