Can’t wait till I have to click “skip ads” twice during a meeting.

"Google Fi, Listen to my badly rhythmed jingle. Using buzzwords from a corporate meeting!"

Zoom is pretty close, they require lots of training data (captcha) to join each meeting.

the fun part is when the group call is interrupted by an ad based of a participants browsing habits

"30% of our special ointment just for you!"

We have the technology to run different ads for each person.

But then you are in the middle of a presentation (screen sharing).

Product placement within the presentation itself. Or interstitials between slides.

are you sure?

Say "McDonald's!" to end commercial.

https://old.reddit.com/r/ABoringDystopia/comments/7k6v05/son...

Charging is fair but the entire model of free service that turns into premium after a critical mass leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

I'm not sure how you could sensibly guard against this behavior but it seems anticompetitive.

> Charging is fair but the entire model of free service that turns into premium after a critical mass leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

It was clear that Meet for individuals' limits were waived due to COVID-19. They have done an announcement about lifting the limits and even stated that it was originally slated to end at September 30 last year. I was a bit surprised they extended it though.

In Google's defense, they aren't the market leader, that's zoom, they are the market challenger. So by definition, they can't be anti-competitive in the market of video conferencing tools, even though Google's otherwise enormous.

You can definitely be anti-competitive as a market challenger. Uber (with their subsidised fairs) would the obvious example of that.

If anything, Uber was competitive instead of anti-competitive. Anti-competitive by definition only applies to potential monopoly.

see FTC: https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/anticompetitive-practices

Predatory pricing is the usual term.

Maybe Google should get a huge fine or be split for being a monopoly that uses it's market position to under-price the actual cost of providing services such as e-mail, video calls, etc.

If Google wasn't dumping prices this way there would already be great alternative services that provide this, but it's hard for someone else to have a selling point when there's a huge conglomerate basically providing this service for free.

I would say generally I am happy where this is going. The more Google makes decisions like these the more opportunities there are for customers to learn what they are actually "paying" for and they would be more willing to give away money for a better service.

For a relatively low cost you can already get an account from Zoom, WebEx, or the like for a low price.

Microsoft even offers options through Skype (although it's limited to 100 people and the calls are limited to 4 hours), and Teams Personal accounts also allow free calls with similar limits.

Since these various services seem to be doing fine, it's hard to say there's a problem with competition in this space right now.

Skype is all good and fun, until you just want to exit the application.

For the down-voters, I was pointing to the anti patterns employed by the developers to make it just about impossible at first sight to exit. You can't right click the task bar, there's no option on the file menu to exit.

You actually have to sign out first. THEN you are given the option to exit the app. Before I discovered this, it was enough for me to uninstall the app. I have no idea why you'd make it this hard to just exit an app.

(My son uses it to talk to his friends across the world, and for him it works great; that's why I opened with "it's all good and fun".)

100 people, 4 hours.. that’s not a call, that’s a conference.

Similar vibes from that Brennan Lee Mulligan's Skype CEO impression: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZI0w_pwZY3E

Yes but what about when we need all hands on deck to brainstorm synergy ideas Bob? Better call a meeting with everybody.

So, Google should stop dumping and raise prices or remove features sure as calls lasting for more than one hour from the free version...?

Yes, it’s going to be way better for the diversity of products offered on the market. Probably not for long-term Google strategy.