Those company-wide Google Meet calls might just get a bit less painful

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Enduring another company-wide conference call on your elderly work laptop could soon be a lot less painful thanks to several new Google Meet updates.

The video conferencing platform has announced several improvements for video meetings streamed within a business or wider organization.

The updates are specifically geared towards those with older or less powerful computing devices, and take advantage of Google Meet's recently unveiled ultra-low latency viewing experience, which looks to put far less stress on older machines.

Google Meet live streaming

Among the new updates, revealed in a Google Workspace update blog post, are a number of tweaks to help organizers and admins run and manage their calls more smoothly. This includes a new join screen experience featuring a quick-access button which meeting participants can use to join a live stream if they prefer that experience over the regular call.

Meeting hosts will also now be able to start live streaming from any ongoing Google Meet call, even if it was not originally planned to have this function, with a link to the new live stream provided instantly to share.

Google Meet also says that video feeds will now start even faster when joining live streams with large audiences, and that viewing live streams from the Google Meet mobile app on Android and iOS devices is now supported.

Elsewhere, viewers of a live stream will now be able to see the size of the audience (including call participants and viewers) in the top left live stream indicator window.

The changes have begun rolling out now, with live streaming available for Google Workspace Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Enterprise Essentials Plus, the Teaching and Learning Upgrade, and Education Plus customers.

Live streamed meetings can be viewed by Google Workspace Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Starter, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Standard, the Teaching and Learning. Upgrade, Education Plus, Essentials Starter, and Essentials users - but are not available to users with personal Google accounts.

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Mike Moore is Deputy Editor at TechRadar Pro. He has worked as a B2B and B2C tech journalist for nearly a decade, including at one of the UK's leading national newspapers and fellow Future title ITProPortal, and when he's not keeping track of all the latest enterprise and workplace trends, can most likely be found watching, following or taking part in some kind of sport.