Google’s video conferencing service, Google Meet, has been enabling individuals to conduct or join virtual meetings via audio, video, chat, and screen sharing, where up to 100 people can meet with no time limits.
From time to time, like many other platforms, Google Meet is also rolling out new features. This week, Google Meet has rolled out a new feature that allows its users to pause the video streams of individual tiles should they want to step up their focus on frequent speakers or presenters.
How to use the new feature
For you to be able to turn off individual feeds, you need to tap the three-dotted menu next to the person’s name on your web’s sidebar. Then, click “Don’t watch.”
Moreover, on mobile, there is a new “Audio only mode,” a feature that turns off all feeds except the presenter’s feed. This feature has not yet been rolled up for desktops yet. It is essentially helpful when you need to save data, such as when using Google Meet in places where the Internet connection is not too strong.
According to Google, Google Meet will never notify others when you decide to switch off their video feeds. Also, their meeting experience will remain unchanged.
Google added that it has started rolling out this feature and will make it available to the entire base within a few weeks.
Fortunately, admins cannot turn off this feature for individuals, so anybody can use it anytime.
Google to pay prominent Canadian businessman half-a-million Canadian dollars
Meanwhile, in other Google news, the company has been ordered to pay a notable Canadian business half a million Canadian dollars, or around $371,000, as the latter sued Google for failing to take down a defamatory search result when his name appears.
The Canadian businessman’s identity is under a publication ban. He sued Google for sharing a link to a post falsely accusing him of being a pedophile. He said his life and business had suffered greatly due to the post.
Google has not yet released a statement regarding the matter.
Last month, a judge in Quebec, one of Canada’s 13 provinces and territories, issued a ruling that ordered Google to pay C$500,000 in damages to the Canadian businessman, who claimed his life had since been a “walking nightmare” because of the defamatory post.
The incident with Google has also reportedly affected one of his sons. Also a high-profile figure, one of his sons testified that his girlfriend’s parents had refused to meet his father due to the post.
“Like Franz Kafka’s character, Josef K. in The Trial, the Plaintiff woke up one day to find himself accused of a crime he did not commit,” Judge Azimuddin Hussain stated in his ruling.
