Google integrates Meet into Gmail and shows up to sixteen participants full screen

Google is working on new functionality for Meet, the video conferencing tool formerly called Hangouts Meet. Users will soon be able to open these directly from Gmail and there will be an option to view a maximum of sixteen participants at the same time.

Meet users can now answer virtual meeting calls directly from Gmail, Google vice president Javier Soltero told Reuters. Until now, this had to be done, for example, via calendar items in the Google Calendar.

Later this month, there will be an option to display participant views in a grid full screen, up to a maximum of sixteen. This is a popular feature of competing Zoom. Furthermore, Meet will improve the display of webcams in poor light and the video conferencing tool will soon be able to filter out background noise such as keyboard strokes.

Meet is Google’s business video tool. Until recently, the service was known as Hangouts Meet. Hangouts is the consumer version. Google claims that Meet gets two million new users every day and has more than 100 million users in education.