Google on Thursday announced that it has been witnessing two million new users each day on its video conferencing platform Google Meet. The company said that the users are spending two billion minutes together which translates to 3800 years in a single day. Google Meet was earlier known as Hangouts Meet. While Google never officially issued a statement regarding the change in name, it did reveal to certain media outlets that the Hangouts Meet branding has been retired and that the platform will now be known as Google Meet. Further, Android Police did spot the support pages being rebranded with the new identity, however, it has to be noted that the apps still spot the old moniker.
In late March, the company in a blog post said that the platform has been witnessing an daily growth rate of over 60 percent and that its daily usage has been more than 25 times than what it was in January.
App Annie, mobile data and analytics company said that the video conferencing apps including Hangouts Meet have seen an increased demand due to work from home policies and government lockdowns. The company said that the people around the world, especially those in Europe and America, have been using the video conferencing apps for work and also for personal use. App Annie said that the people are using the apps to stay in touch with friends and families.
App Annie in its report on March 30 said that the Hangouts Meet has seen a strong increase in many countries including Italy, Spain, US and UK. The report said that during the week of March 15 to March 21, the app has seen 140 times the average download in Q4 2019 in Italy. In the similar time frame, the app has seen 60 times higher downloads in Spain, 30 times in the US and 24 times in the UK.
While Zoom remains as the top video conferencing app in India and around the world, several schools, companies and even governments have started to scale down on the use of Zoom. In recent days, Zoom is in the spotlight due to several security and privacy concerns including a report that highlighted that Zoom sent user’s data to Facebook irrespective of user using Facebook.
In a separate post on Wednesday, the company highlighted Google Meet’s security and privacy credentials potentially to lure more people towards the platform.