Google Meet gains immersive new backgrounds and video effects

Coming only to the web for now

Online meetings will remain the norm in the post-pandemic world as businesses and educational institutions move to a hybrid approach. Thanks to its rapid development pace, Google managed to make Meet one of the best video conferencing tools out there and a formidable competitor to Zoom. Over the last couple of months only, Google has increased the participant limit in Meet to 500 people, added an audio/video lock, and rolled out automatic video lighting adjustments. Meet has also gained support for animated backgrounds in June this year, which is now being expanded with a few new additions.

Previously, Meet offered six background options: Animated characters sitting in a classroom, Party with disco light, Forest with squirrels and foxes, Spaceship, Under the sea, and Beach with palm trees. With today's announcement, Google is adding several new immersive backgrounds to the mix.

There are two new animated backdrops — Cafe and Condo — with different weather conditions (rainy/snowy/sunny) and time zones (morning/night). If animated backgrounds are a bit too much for your liking, you can use one of the new light and color filters or stylized backgrounds to spruce up your video feed instead.

You can apply the new backgrounds or video effects before joining or during a call from the Effects panel. The new additions are coming to Meet for web first, with no word on when they will be available on iOS and Android despite these platforms supporting animated backgrounds.

The new backgrounds are rolling out for all Google Workspace, G Suite Basic, and Business customers first, with only free personal Google accounts missing out on it for now.

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