Google Meet Calls Can Support 500 Participants on Workspace

Google has raised the participant limit for its videoconferencing platform Google Meet for select premium Workspace tiers.

“For select Google Workspace editions, users can now host meetings in Google Meet with up to 500 participants,” it said in a blog post.

“We hope that by increasing the meeting size, it will be easier to connect and collaborate with your colleagues, clients, and customers,” it added.

The new limit will be available for Google Workspace Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, and Education Plus customers.

It will not be available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Enterprise Essentials, Education Fundamentals, Frontline, Nonprofits, the Teaching and Learning Upgrade, or G Suite Basic and Business customers.

For users with personal Gmail accounts, the platform supports up to 100 people, as also for users of Business Starter, Frontline, Education Fundamentals, Education Standard, and G Suite Basic.

The limit is 150 for users of Business Standard, Enterprise Essentials, Essentials, G Suite Business, Nonprofit, and Teaching and Learning Upgrade.

Delete ‘space’ in Chat

Separately, it is rolling out the ability to delete a named ‘space’ in Google Chat for select Google Workspace users.

“We’re bringing the ability to delete a named space in Google Chat to the Google Workspace Business Standard and Business Starter editions. We plan to extend this capability to more Google Workspace editions next year,” it said.

“With this capability, creators of a space can fully delete it from Chat, which includes all owned contents of the space, room tasks, and files and attachments not saved elsewhere,” it further explained.

Additionally, members will no longer be able to access the space, its files, or the member list after it has been deleted.

The tech giant had introduced a revamped ‘Rooms’ in Google Chat called ‘Spaces’ in September this year.

“Spaces are the central place for team collaboration in Google Workspace,” Google had said.

“With spaces, it’s easy for users to see the full history, context and content of conversations, so everyone can follow along and jump in to contribute at any time,” it had added.

The feature enabling users to delete a ‘space’ in Chat will not be available for Google Workspace editions that have Google Vault.

“If you upgrade from Google Workspace Business Standard or Business Starter to an edition that supports Google Vault, you will lose the ability to delete named Spaces,” it said.

Google anticipates that this feature will be available for all Google Workspace editions in 2022.

There is no admin setting for this feature. For end-users, this feature will be available by default. To delete a space, use the dropdown menu and tpress “Delete Space”. Only the creator of the room has this ability and will delete the space for everyone.

November 17, 2021