Not sure what you’re talking about. My work has been using Google meets and I would strongly disagree here. Google hangouts has been relatively fast (by Google standards) at adapting to the market needs and improving its features. It also runs in the browser which is a lot nicer than zoom’s dark patterns to install dubious executables or deal with a crappy webrtc interface.

Google's video products used to be better, and better integrated. I used to use it to call my mom. Now I have to send her an email with a link to click instead of just initiating a video call. And they keep changing the names of all of it. The underlying video technology is perfectly fine, it's all the other stuff around it that's a complete train wreck.

The video quality is terrible. And many of us have symmetric gigabit internet so it's not like it's our connection. Zoom is actually crystal clear in most cases.

I've found it defaults video quality to 480p but you can increase to 720p in settings and it looks much crisper.