Google continues to chase Zoom in the video conferencing wars In its latest move, the company has integrated Meet into Gmail, making its video calling service always directly visible to users

Gmail already has quite a few quick-access tools, such as easily creating and sharing calendar invitations within the service or jumping into a Hangouts meeting However, some users are now noticing a Meet option in Gmail's sidebar that makes it easy to initiate a video conference call from the email service

This may seem like a small thing, but given that millions of people use Gmail, adding Meet to Gmail makes it more intuitive to use In addition, Google is adding Zoom-like features to Meet to further extend Meet's functionality, adding a tile view similar to Zoom's interface

Google Meet was a paid premium service until a few days ago, but Google has made it available for free to everyone, not just G Suite users

Google Meet has a slight advantage over Zoom in that it is more secure, requiring you to log into your Gmail account and accept an invitation to the meeting from the host Such a feature helps allay privacy concerns when setting up a video conference

Google still has the Duo app for Android as well as Hangouts, which means that Google effectively has three services that allow similar video calls While it is great to have choices, sometimes you want one service that works rather than having to choose between multiple services with similar but different features

Pushing Meet out to Gmail could put Meet at the center, and more people might adopt this service and move away from Zoom After all, Zoom fatigue is a reality

Since the coronavirus lockdown was implemented, Zoom's popularity has skyrocketed However, now that Google Meet has been built and integrated into Google's core services, the search giant may begin stealing Zoom's thunder