Google is expanding its co-hosting feature to include up to 25 people, but for some reason, it’s not working as intended. According to a Google spokesperson, the company is working on a fix that will allow co-hosts to communicate and collaborate better. However, at this point in time, there are some co-hosts who are not being able to join the conversation because they have too many friends or family members. This issue is likely due to Google’s recent change in how it calculates the number of people who can be a part of a chat.Previously, co-hosts were only allowed to have 10 people in their chat at any given time. This limit was designed to prevent too many people from dominating the conversation and making it difficult for other co-hosts.
Google Meet is constantly receiving updates and new features. Today is no exception, as Google has announced that all Meet users can have up to 25 co-hosts in a meeting. While it’s a cool feature, it’s hard to imagine why you’d need 25 people co-hosting a call.
Google Meet’s New Co-Hosting Limits
Previously, this feature was only available to Google’s Education customers, but the company has decided to roll it out to all Google Meet users.
Co-hosts can perform many of the same functions as the host—they can mute participants, launch polls, or manage Q&As. Basically, any of the controls afforded to the host are available to co-hosts. This can help take some of the load off the host by allowing them to focus on their presentation and not on those other tasks.
While it sounds cool, we have a hard time picturing a situation where you’d need 25 different people creating polls and muting participants. Still, if a meeting is large and unruly enough, it could be a useful option to have.
Other New Google Meet Features
Google also announced that it is implementing new safety features that will let the host limit who can share their screen, send chat messages, mute all users, and end meetings. This will allow better control over a conference, which could be especially useful for larger ones where things can get pretty hectic.
Google is also adding a “Quick access” setting to control who needs to request permission to join a meeting and who can join. However, this feature isn’t available to Google Workspace Individual customers or users with personal Google Accounts.
This is a solid set of updates from Google, and it definitely should help in the battle for virtual meeting supremacy against services like Zoom.
