Hangouts is now Google Meet; Google hopes to cash in on Zoom privacy issues

As we already know, Google has advised its employees to stay away from Zoom, an enterprise video-conferencing app, which has been subject to numerous privacy and security issues over the last few days.

Now, Google has put up a detailed blog post, which goes to explain how its video conferencing service ‘Google Meet’ is more secure than Zoom. The company has not revealed exactly why its employees were using Zoom in the first place though.

Google cashing in on Zoom privacy issues

In its recent blog post, the company wrote:

“Google Meet’s security controls are turned on by default, so that in most cases, organizations and users won’t have to do a thing to ensure the right protections are in place.”

Hangouts is now Google Meet

The latest Google blog post doesn’t mention Zoom anywhere. However, there are numerous mentions of Google Meet, the branding that definitely sounds unfamiliar to us. Google is rebranding ‘Hangouts’ as ‘Google Meet.’ Hangout Chats will be called Google Chats.

Google Meet promises to keep intruders at bay using several privacy measures such as limiting the ability of external participants to join a meeting more than 15 minutes in advance, reducing the window in which a brute force attack can even be attempted, etc. Additionally, the company is rolling out several new security privacy and features to Google Meet.

Henceforth, only hosts and calendar owners can mute or remove unwanted participants from the meetings, further preventing student participants from muting or removing teachers and instructors.

Plus, only meeting creators and calendar owners can approve requests to join video calls. Meeting participants can’t rejoin nicknamed meetings once the final participant has left. It prevents students from joining nicknamed meetings after the instructor has left the call.

Google has also talked about 2-factor authentication, hardware, and phone-based security keys and Google prompt to step up the security and privacy measures with respect to Meet.

Earlier, Microsoft has reiterated its privacy and security commitments concerning Microsoft Teams.

Due to the on-going COVID-19 outbreak, companies have transitioned to work-from-home arrangements and as a result, the consumption of enterprise video-conferencing apps like Zoom and Teams has skyrocketed like never before.