Google was expected to change the name of its Google Hangouts Meet service and the company has finally done so. Google Hangouts Meet is now Google Meet, giving up the Hangouts branding. While Google hasn't officially announced the name change, it now calls the video call platform as Google Meet in the recently-released blog post highlighting the Google app's security features.
Google Hangouts Meet now Google Meet
Google has changed the name of Google Hangouts Meet to Google Meet and the business video calling platform is now a standalone part of the Google GSuite along with other apps such as Gmail, Google Docs, Google Drive, Google Sheets, and more.
In addition to this, Google Hangouts Chat, which is a messaging app, has also been rebranded and is now called Google Chat. The new names can now be seen on both the Google products' websites too.
Apart from this, Google has released a couple of security features for the Google Meet app that will prove to be helpful for users while working from home and not comprising their privacy. It is suggested that Google Meet doesn't allow hackers to brute force meeting IDs and ensures no external participant joins unless he or she is on the calendar or have been invited.
Only meeting creators and calendar owners can mute meetings, remove participants, and approve requests to join a particular meeting. Meeting participants can't come to a nicknamed meeting without the presence of the last person to leave. Additionally, Google is releasing frequent security patches to restrict security issues, doesn't require installation of any additional software to use it on the web, and is encrypted. It also supports 2FA to remain secure.
The new security features are highlighted to make sure Google's video calling app is used more right now, given that currently Zoom and Microsoft Teams are the two options people are resorting to during work from home. Recently, Google has banned the use of Zoom on part of its employees.