By no means am I a fan of Zoom and agree browser-based video call platforms are superior but, Google needs to cut the nonsense of treating Firefox (and I guess Safari) as second-class. The only reason I have a de-Googled Chrome on my systems is to use Meet.
Background blur used to work fine on Firefox, until they suddenly removed it and claimed that only Chrome can do those effects. A super obvious move to force users to their own browser. Luckily with the new Macs, you can do blur on the OS level instead of in the browser. Now it's only the auto-cropping that I'm missing.
One thing that annoys me most in Google Meet is that you cannot hide UI and make shared desktop fullscreen when somebody is screensharing. Then I found paid (!) Chrome extension for doing exactly this, and now I have a conspiracy theory that PMs at Google intentionally push for worse user experience so they can sell paid extensions for improving UX later.
It's insane to me that virtual effects and backgrounds are a feature integrated into video conferencing to begin with. Why couple these things instead of having them live as a separate application that exposes a virtual camera to any software that needs it. This way you're choosing video conferencing software based on how good it is at being video conferencing, and camera effects software based on how good it is at doing camera effects (if you even want them).
Do you have a Mac? Then install the beta of Sonoma and turn on portrait mode. It's background blur between the camera and your video app, just as requested. It'll probably pull less CPU than Zoom doing it, too.
I can't rearrange tiles. That's a key feature. I can't hide non-video participants. I can't choose the layout of participants, so I can't prioritise the person currently speaking, or the person presenting, or anything else. I can't tag speakers in chat (I am fairly sure). I can't detach the chat window.
It's also missing all the pointless junk for social meetups, like backgrounds, animations, and so on, but who needs that?
It is a minimal viable product, basically. Given that this task is a common one now, there are other options with their own advantages.
The sound is significantly worse. Meet struggles to work out who is talking and who is just in a normal background noise place. So it keeps cutting from the actual speaker to someone who's desk neighbour is chatting. Ever been in a demo and had to ask a clients CEO to mute himself please?
One of the most annoying things to me of all the shit that Google pulls is that out of all of big tech they are actually the most capable of producing good software that is pleasant to use on a consistent basis. Especially web applications.
Doing actual meetings with Meet is indeed simpler, more straightforward and a better experience all around in my experience. Unfortunately with Meet, the framerate and mostly the low bitrate when sharing your screen makes it absolutely awful for just sharing your screen and working together on something. Text rapidly becomes a pixelated mess and if you scroll, you get a slideshow. I never really liked Zoom, but at least we could read what was on another's screen.
What kind of internet connection do you have and what kind of a machine do you have?
Looks like there are some problems you can't see.
In my country, the connection is not good, and some teammates have humble machines. Zoom happens to work well through that, while Google Meet keeps dropping some people.
