Hangouts Meet gains free U.S. and Canada phone calling to add participants

Abner Li | Apr 2 2018 - 2:34 pm PT

Hangouts Chat finally launched to the public in February, joining Hangouts Meet and reflecting the move towards Hangouts becoming an enterprise service. The video conferencing app is today adding the ability to make free phone calls.

Meet is focussed on team video conferencing across the web, Android, and iOS. Users have long been able to join a call by visiting a link or dialing in with a phone number and PIN.

Now, Hangouts Meet users can directly dial U.S. and Canadian phone numbers in order to add others to a call. Like on the consumer version of Hangouts, phone calls are free. Under “Add others” or “meeting details,” there will be a new “Add someone by phone” option.

This is currently limited to the web client and G Suite users who are in the same domain as the event organizer. Meanwhile, calls to the U.S. and Canada can be made from a number of countries. G Suite admins will need to first enable Google Voice in the Admin console.