Google working on new teleconferencing product GMeet: reports

10 Apr 2015

Google is said to be working on a new teleconferencing product called Google Meetings, or GMeet.

Google+ user Florian Kiersch first spotted the product, and while details were rather sketchy at this point, he noted that from a technical perspective it appeared to be based purely on WebRTC.

As far as functionality was concerned, GMeet allowed video and audio communication, and adding files to a meeting from either Google Drive or Dropbox.

The leaked screenshots were from the web-based service, not a mobile app, and there was also a Chrome extension that acted as a simple helper.

A number of sites reported the service appeared to allow users to schedule and join teleconference calls with one click, rather than requiring users to dial in a string of numbers to enter a room.

According to phandroid.com, references to GMeet in leak code snippets dated back as far as 2011, and most of those references were for things that are already formed a part Hangouts like whiteboards, screen sharing and integration with Google Calendar.

According to commentators, this could mean GMeet was powered by Hangouts with a few tweaks and features, it could be adapted for business use. It was, however, not clear when or if this would be introduced.