Google Meet is officially here, for free

Google's Cloud's Meet free service is officially live, the tech giant has announced.

Google made the announcement last month that it will offer the Google Meet service for free to everyone to use until 30 September 2020.

Over the last few weeks, usage on Google Meet has exceeded over 2 billion minutes per day and as of last week, Meet's daily meeting participants surpassed 100 million.

"When I joined Google last year to lead G Suite, I couldn't have imagined how the world was about to change. But in a few short months, working together took on a whole new meaning, and meetings became about so much more than getting things done," says Javier Soltero, vice president - GM, G Suite.

"From doctor check-up meetings, to meetings with financial advisors, to study meetings, workout meetings, and birthday meetings. They may not look or feel like traditional meetings, but they're the most important meetings happening right now.

"That's why we've re-engineered Google Meet, originally built for secure business meetings, to make it free and available to all," he says.

"Now that the rollout we announced two weeks ago is complete, anyone with an email address can sign up and get started at meet.google.com, for free. And to make meetings even more accessible and helpful, in the coming days you'll also be able to use Meet directly in Gmail," explains Soltero.

Soltero says the company has been fast-tracking the most requested features for Meet, and are now making them available to all.

"Anyone can use Meet's simple scheduling and screen sharing, real-time captions, and layouts that adapt to your preference, including an expanded tiled view—all built on Google's secure, reliable global infrastructure," he says.

"Speaking from my own experience, the new features in Meet are already making our team (and my family) meetings better. We love how tiled view makes us feel more connected—and the occasional surprise visits from kids and family pets!

"And we're continuing to look for ways to make Google Meet more accessible and useful. For example, we know video meetings can be challenging to follow for those with hearing loss, which is why we made sure AI-powered automatic live captioning was available to everyone."

Meet is available for free for everyone at meet.google.com and on iOS or Android. If you have an existing Google Account (for example, if you're a @gmail.com user), you can sign in at meet.google.com to get started.