Google is ending its unlimited group video calls on Meet for free Gmail accounts a year after it introduced the feature to compete with video-calling app Zoom.
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Google users with free accounts will now have a 60-minute limit on group calls on Google Meet, rather than the previous 24-hour duration.
At 55 minutes, they will receive a notification that the call is about to end. To extend the call, users can upgrade their Google account, else, the call will end at 60 minutes.
As the limit is only for calls with three or more participants, one-on-one video calls can still go up to 24 hours.
Google first lifted the time limit on group calls in April last year as the pandemic induced work-from-home around the world. The feature was supposed to end in September but the tech giant extended the free unlimited calling feature to March 31,2021 and later to June 30.
Other video calling platforms have also handled one-on-one calls differently as compared with group calls. Not that people are going back to offices, firms have started taking away the additional features they offered last year amid the pandemic