Google Meet is advertised arbitrarily via Zoom!

Google seems to be trying very hard to promote the Meet video conferencing tool, due to the growing demand for video conferencing services.

A new report shows that the company is secretly adding a Meet link to Zoom invitations sent via Gmail.

The MSPoweruser website reports that some recipients of invitations to a virtual Zoom conference have noticed an additional link in their email that allows them to attend this meeting through Meet.

In this particular case, the Meet link was detected in Zoom invitations sent via Gmail using the Windows 10 mail client. It also appears that only recipients can see the Meet link and senders may have no idea that the email with their invitation has been modified in this way.

Video conferencing platforms have seen huge growth this year amid the coronavirus pandemic. A recent Gartner report predicted that end-user spending on cloud-based web conferencing services would increase by 24,3% by 2020. It is no surprise, then, that tech companies like Google are starting to push their services very aggressively.

Google's attempt to capitalize on Zoom's popularity may make sense, as the latter has greatly increased its user base due to global lockdowns. The company reported a huge increase in its users, from 10 million in December to 200 million daily users in March.