The year 2020 has put many things to the test, creating many challenges to overcome. If we are looking for a silver lining, there is one: difficulties also serve to spur creativity and find new solutions.

When it comes to staying in touch, working or learning, remote communication tools such as Google Meet have proved to be solutions that can be put to good use. Many things have changed, but staying in touch and being able to hold face-to-face, remote or hybrid meetings is still essential.

That’s why Google Meet has taken a step forward and now offers real-time subtitles in four new languages: Spanish (Spain and Latin America), German, French and Portuguese (Brazil), in addition to the previously available English. These new subtitles in different languages will be available to all users, free and paid, on the web version of Google Meet.

Google’s Speech-to-Text technology is used to enable real-time captioning, making it easier for the hearing impaired to follow the conversation and participate in the meeting. And by offering a wider range of captioned languages on Meet, video calls will be more accessible to everyone, making them more and more widely used.

 

 

Improved and free support

 

Another new Meet implementation is group room services, especially useful for educators, who will be able to create separate spaces conducive to study.

At the same time, Google Workspace has also seen improvements, allowing companies or organisations to create discussion groups via group rooms. In these cases, moderators will be supported by a new countdown timer.

There will also be moderation requests, which will be used to alert the moderator when their help or presence is needed in a group. It will also be possible to participate in these group rooms by joining by phone, as well as anonymous users.

 

 

Attendance reports, viewing data and more

 

Another notable enhancement to Google Meet is attendance reporting and viewing data during live broadcasts, with additional controls for administrators and hosts. There is even a new “raise your hand” option, which is particularly useful for large meetings, as it encourages participation in an organised way.  This feature will allow participants to let you know when they have a question to ask or want to ask for a turn to speak to participate in the conversation.

Video calls on Google Meet will continue to be unlimited within a maximum of 24 hours on the free version of Gmail accounts until 31 March 2021.