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Google Classroom adds Meet integration as premium video features extended, usage soars

Distance learning amid the coronavirus pandemic has pushed many to tools like Google Classroom and Meet. Google today provided new usage figures for the two products, detailed a new Meet-Classroom integration, and extended how long premium features will be available for free.

At the start of last month, Google announced that advanced conferencing capabilities — meetings with up to 250 participants, internal livestreaming to 100,000 viewers, and recording to Drive — would be free until July 1.

This has now been extended for all G Suite accounts around the world until September 30. The rename away from “Hangouts” Meet will be “reflected in the product and across resources over the next few weeks.”

Meanwhile, Google Classroom — the company’s tool for posting and collecting assignments, collaboration, and discussion — is adding Meet integration to quickly generate managed video calls.

Educators can create a unique Meet link for each class, which is displayed on the Classroom Stream and Classwork pages. The link acts as a dedicated meeting space for each class, making it easy for both teachers and students to join.

On the usage front, 120 million teachers and students around the world are now using G Suite for Education, while Google Classroom has over 100 million users. More broadly, G Suite earlier this year reached 6 million paying customers after marking the last million in February 2019.

The newly-renamed Google Meet is seeing 2 million new users per day. That milestone was reached earlier this week, while there are 2 billion minutes of video calls a day.

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Avatar for Abner Li Abner Li

Editor-in-chief. Interested in the minutiae of Google and Alphabet. Tips/talk: abner@9to5g.com