Google Meet is Getting Breakout Rooms

One of the most used video conferencing services, Google Meet, is getting breakout rooms. This is sure to be very exciting news for teachers who prefer Google Meet, but have opted to use Zoom because they wanted to use the breakout room feature. Unfortunately, they will only be available to G Suite Enterprise for Education customers at first. As of right now, GRPS does not have this subscription, so we will not be able to have the breakout rooms yet. Google announced that breakout rooms will become a feature “later this year,”so we have no way of knowing the exact date.

The new Google Meet feature will be able to hold up to 100 seperate breakouts rooms in a single call. This is a significant advantage in comparison to Zoom’s application as Zoom only lets users hold up to 50 seperate rooms. Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic started, Google Meet has been frequently adding new features to their video conferencing service to compete with Zoom. Some other impressive features that Google Meet has launched are the background noise cancellation tool and a gallery view similar to Zoom’s.

Google Meet has drastically increased in popularity after the pandemic started. It started by only being available to G Suite customers, but they have since added a free tier for everyone. With the addition of breakout rooms finally coming to Google Meet, there is a good chance that they will keep up with Zoom. However, we have no idea how reliable these breakout rooms for Google Meet will be. In my own experience, Zoom has tended to be more reliable and stable than Google Meet. Hopefully we will be able to test these new breakout rooms in the near future…

JONATHAN HOFFMAN

Editor Emeritus at The City Voice | MIPA Honorable Mention Award Winner

Hello everyone. I am a 12th grader this year at City and this is my second year at the City Voice. I love to write about sports, science and sometimes even other topics. I hope you are enjoying our City Voice articles!