ZOOM has been the giant in televideo conferencing…
Meet the giant killer, Google Meet.
Subscribers to Gmail now have free access to Google Meet where televideo conferences can help for large groups for free. Google and ZOOM are quite similar: screen sharing, video and mic controls and use of meeting ID codes for added security.
Both companies have some ‘watch out’ aspects to their service.
ZOOM’s CEO is a native of China but with American citizenship now. He claims no links to the government of China. Take it with a grain of salt, the CEO is a retired Chinese army commander. And any Chinese citizen, even one with dual citizenship still may be subject to direction or regulation by the Chinese government.
Google, on the other hand, has a text captioning feature where a conversation is displayed as captions in near real-time at the bottom of the screen. A nice feature but with a vital caveat: the conversation is managed by Google’s AI which means it is logged and stored with Google for future use and/or further manipulation. Do not be surprised if you start receiving ads for something related to what you mentioned in your meeting.
[ Google users who may be troubled by intrusions by Google in their Gmail and in their Google meetings, should become familiar with various tools such as filtering and blocking. However, in this age, nothing is really private no matter what precautions are taken. Do you want privacy? Discard ALL your electronic devices. ]
Another ZOOM caution: ZOOM installs itself automatically to your device when you join your first ZOOM meeting. Convenient but if you decide to remove ZOOM from your system, the program leaves transparent legacies of itself on your system, their purpose unknown.
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