Who Owns Google Meet?

Google Meet was launched in March 2017 as an enterprise-focused video conferencing service. The product was designed to replace Google Hangouts for business users, offering a more secure and scalable meeting platform. At launch, Meet was available only to Google Workspace (then called G Suite) customers and was integrated with Google Calendar for scheduling.

The service initially competed against established enterprise video conferencing tools like Cisco WebEx and Microsoft Skype for Business. Google positioned Meet as a simpler, browser-based alternative that did not require software installation. Users could join meetings by clicking a link in Chrome, and the service used adaptive technology to adjust video quality based on network conditions.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic drove massive adoption of video conferencing tools across all categories. Google made Meet available for free to all Google account holders in April 2020, removing the Workspace requirement for basic usage. Meet usage surged from approximately 100 million daily meeting participants in early 2020 to over 235 million by the end of the year. During the same period, Zoom went from 10 million daily meeting participants to over 300 million, but Google Meet's growth was significant given its integration with Gmail and Calendar.

Google added features rapidly through 2020 and 2021 to compete with Zoom. These included background blur, noise cancellation, virtual backgrounds, grid view (up to 49 participants), and meeting recording. Google also integrated Meet with Google Chat, creating a unified communication experience within Workspace. In 2021, Google introduced Meet hardware devices including the Meet Series One conference room kit.

In 2022 and 2023, Google focused on AI-powered features for Meet. The company introduced automatic transcription, real-time captioning in multiple languages, and meeting summaries powered by Google's language models. By June 2025, over 50 million people used AI-powered meeting notes in Google Meet monthly.

Google rebranded the consumer version of Meet as part of a broader consolidation of its communication products in 2022. The Duo video calling app was merged into Meet, creating a single application for both one-on-one calls and group meetings. This consolidation simplified Google's communication product lineup, which had become confusing with overlapping products.

By 2026, Google Meet had over 300 million monthly active users. The service holds approximately 6.3% of the global video conferencing market by share, behind Zoom and Microsoft Teams. However, Meet benefits from its deep integration with Google Workspace, which gives it a large installed base of enterprise and education users who adopt Meet as part of their existing Google subscription.