Google Meet (formerly Hangouts Meet)

2025:347% increase in traffic of Russian Google Meet users

The volume of Russian Google Meet traffic in the first quarter of 2025 increased by 347% compared to the same period in 2024. Such statistics in May 2025 shared the operator. Beeline The operator did not disclose absolute indicators. The data was collected using the Bilain Analytics platform, which analyzes the traffic of all operator subscribers. Moscow remains the largest source of traffic and the number of users, St. Petersburg ranks second.^[1]

2020: Name change to Google Meet

On April 9, 2020, Google announced the renaming of corporate communications services Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet. Now they are called Google Chat and Google Meet, respectively.

The rebranding took place against the backdrop of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, which spurred demand for tools for remote work of employees, including Hangouts services.

Google renamed corporate services Hangouts

Curiously, Google did not separately announce the change in the names of Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet, but limited itself to only telling Meet's security and privacy. However, the renamed was officially confirmed on the Google Hangouts support page - it was named as Google Meet Help.

By April 10, 2020, the rebrand was not complete. For example, Google Meet search results lead to links to the old Hangout Meets app.^[2]

According to Google, after the outbreak of the coronavirus COVID-19, Google Meet use increased 25 times - by April 2020 relative to January.

The company also noted that Google Meet has implemented many anti-abuse tools to ensure conference security. It is alleged that Google Meet makes it difficult to programmatically match conference identifiers - when an attacker tries to guess the ID and makes unauthorized attempts to join sessions using 10-character codes with 25-character combinations.

We limit the ability of external participants to join the conference in more than 15 minutes, thereby reducing the window in which you can even launch an attack head-on. External participants cannot join a meeting unless they are invited on a calendar or have been invited by team members. Otherwise, they must request a connection to the conference, and their request must be accepted by a member of the organization that created the conference, the blog says.

2017: Announcement

In March 2017, Google announced two corporate communication tools that are being developed as part of the Hangouts project. We are talking about Hangouts Meet and Hangouts Chat applications.

Hangouts Meet is designed for video conferencing, in which up to 30 people can take part. A feature of the program is the organization of video chats in high definition (HD) format.

Hangouts Meet Service

In the mobile version of Hangouts Meet, meeting schedules are available (with time, place and subject of conversation), a dialing section (for traveling users) and links for quick access to chats. The application is integrated with Gmail mail and Calendar for users of the online suite of office programs G Suite.

Connection to the video chat in Hangouts Meet is carried out by a link sent by the organizer of the video conference by e-mail or posted in the general "Calendar." The new service will be available to G Suite corporate subscriber users in the coming weeks, Google said in a March 9, 2017 post.

New solutions from Google essentially divide the Hangouts service into two, which can confuse users who are used to correspondence and create video conferencing in one application.

Hangouts is aimed at private users, while Hangouts Meet and Hangouts Chat is an attempt to attract a corporate audience. Google did not report ways to monetize new projects.^[3]

Notes