Google Meet vs Zoom
February 12, 2021
With more people attending Virtual classrooms and working from home, you might be wondering what the best way is to communicate with your colleagues, classmates, and teachers. Nowadays, thanks to the web, there are many options for meeting up online, ensuring that you can learn and work from home easily.
Two of the most popular online communication tools are Google Meet and Zoom, which are used by workplaces and classrooms around the world. Both provide the ability to interact with other participants through video conferencing, making it so businesses and schools can conduct video meetings and lessons through a variety of devices.
Google Meet is a video communication platform used by a lot of people. Though it may not be as well known as Zoom, it is still a worldwide platform.
Nuvya S, a 7th grader at North Star says, “I like Google Meet better. I just feel like it is so much cleaner and easier to use. It’s just more modern.”
She adds, “I really like how in Google Meet, it gives you the option to turn your camera or mic on/off before you go into the meet. Zoom breakout rooms are a bit glitchy and they turn on your camera as soon as you get in them.”
Zoom is another large video conferencing platform used by many. This online application is used by around 200 million people a day.
Ms. Fadel, a 7th grade math teacher, uses Zoom. She says, “There’s certain things I like better about Zoom than Google Meet. I like Zoom’s breakout rooms. I do wish they would work better in Zoom for the students on their chromebooks, though.”
“I think Zoom is better for large meetings, it doesn’t minimize the sizes of the squares, while Google Meet does.”
There are also people who don’t have that big of an opinion on which platform to use.
Mrs. Robinson, a 5th grade math teacher, is one of them. She says, “I’ve gone back and forth from Zoom and Google Meet a lot. There’s good things about both of them. I like the Google Meet breakout rooms and how you can move kids around in them. It is easy in both Google Meet and Zoom to poke in and see what they are working on. It’s also easy in Google Meet how you don’t have to admit people to get in, they can just get in by themselves.”
Both video chat platforms have their ups and downs. Some people prefer one more than the other, and vise versa. There are also people who don’t have that big of an opinion. Which platform do you prefer?
Write your opinion down in the chat, if you want to share how you think about Google Meet and Zoom
I've played the flute for around 6 years. I have a pet bird. My favorite school subject is science.
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This is a great article! It’s very well written!
Agree.
On the chrome book I like better Google Meet, but on a Mac, version 5.3.1 of Zoom is really cool! There are backgrounds, and video backgrounds, and also little stuff like a frame, filter and others that work much better than on Google Meet.
I prefer Google Meet more because the backgrounds are better and it’s more comfortable. Nicely Written!
I think Google Meet is better because, yes, there are the cool backgrounds on Zoom, and to the person having the background, they think that it makes the meet more fun, but it is SO DISTRACTING. I’m fine with just a blurred background, but when there is a gif of a Hawaiian beach, its too informal.
And a lot of teachers prefer Zoom, because you can see more people, but if you go down to the three dots, click format, and then there is a bar that lets you see up to 49 people, more than a class. And whoever is speaking, automatically goes onto the main screen. So you never lose someone who is talking.
I personally prefer zoom. When I’m in a meet, everything just lags a ton, and its just really annoying. Zoom is a lot better if you don’t want lag, but meet would probably be a lot better than zoom if it didn’t lag so much.
From my POV, Google Meet is better in every aspect. Why?
1. Zoom on Chromebooks have limited settings and is incredibly unintuitive.
2. You can see up to 49 people in format, while Chromebook Zoom you can only see up to 16 people on one slide. It makes trying to see the whole class’ opinion on things quickly a real pain.
3. Virtual backgrounds? Guess what, Chromebook Zoom doesn’t have ’em!
4. Emma D, your situation, it isn’t an issue with Google Meet. Usually issues regarding lag is a network/wifi issue, meaning that either someone is always taking up bandwidth when you do Google Meet classes, or your internet isn’t good.
5. Zoom doesn’t allow you to hide your self view, and chat when not fullscreened is quite obtrusive and covers quite a bit of the Zoom window. When you close chat again, there’s going to be a giant hole where the chat was, and the Zoom window won’t get back to its old size, and you have to change it manually.
6. Even entering Zoom meetings is haphazard and unruly. First, if you don’t remember the password, you have to search around in your emails or classrooms for a link, which might not even be the correct one, and then you have to wait for the teacher to let you in or even start the meeting. Then, when the status changes(from starting meeting to waiting room, or waiting room to main meeting), if you aren’t actively staring at the screen and have it maximized, you’ll leave the meeting! LEAVE THE MEETING! And then you have to rejoin ALL OVER AGAIN!
7. Want to test your mic and video before or during a class? Guess what? Using Zoom? No luck, buddy. You can’t test ’em, even when you’re in a meeting. That’s how bad the Chromebook Zoom settings are. At least you get video and audio preview before joining a Google meet.
8. Background noise or video noise that you want to eliminate? I wonder which platform lacks this feature, hmmm…. Oh I know! Zoom ain’t got it! Google Meet has a feature to cancel moderate background noise, like computer or regular fans, or maybe some machine that makes noise.
9. Slow internet? Don’t want to use as much bandwidth? Oh look, you can change the resolution of your camera and how fine the resolution of cameras you are receiving is! Then, if your internet is slow, you can just turn it down, and then you’re good to go! But wait! Zoom doesn’t have this!
10. Can’t hear clearly in a meet? Just turn on captions, and you can see speech-to-text, so you can still understand what everyone is saying and who is saying it without needing to be hearing the meet. And I wonder which platform doesn’t include this…
11. Troubleshooting why your Google Meet is slow? (cough Emma D cough). Guess what? Google Meet has a “troubleshooting” mini-page, that will tell you the amount of delay, and how much load is currently on your computer system. It will indicate whether you have too many tabs open, or someone is using up too much bandwidth watching Youtube or something. However, this feature isn’t on the Chromebook Zoom. Real surprise there.
I think these 11 points will sum up why Zoom, at least the Chromebook Zoom, is no match for Google Meet. I’ve seen how much better regular Zoom can do, and this version of Chromebook Zoom is, in my eyes, a disgrace to the name of “Zoom”.
P.S. Zoom is the name of a villain from The Flash. Another reason why I prefer Google Meet then…