Gmail on the desktop web today is home to more than just email. It’s long had text chat and video calling, while the last major redesign added Tasks integration. Google now looks to be bringing Chat, Meet, and Tasks functionality directly to Gmail for Android.
Meet — as the app is officially called now — has seen immense usage in light of COVID-19. Google today detailed a number of new features for the video conferencing service, starting with Meet integration in Gmail.
Hangouts Meet just got its much-needed rebrand to Google Meet amidst the surging popularity of videoconferencing tools in general. Alongside a trademark for that term, there’s another Hangouts product whose fate has yet to be decided. Hangouts Chat, the teams-focused Slack competitor from the Mountain View company, might also be getting a rebrand that does away with the troublesome Hangouts branding.
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.
The branding around Hangouts — in 2020, that means Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet — is a mess. Those two brands are derivatives of a pre-existing brand that never made much sense in the first place. In today’s suddenly-video-conferencing-centric world, Google needs to simplify things, and a new support page update suggests that change is finally coming.
