Wainhouse Senior Analyst Craig Durr is joined by Google’s Mark Ewing, Group Product Manager, to discuss the expansion of Google Meet — which now includes the rich interoperability with Zoom, the addition of Android appliances for Google Meet in partnerships with Poly and Logitech, and adaptive framing and other features to aid in hybrid work scenarios.
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Transcript:
Craig Durr: Hey, everybody. This is Craig Durr with Wainhouse Research. We are live on the floor from ISE. This is the world premier location to be if you’re an AV or systems integration professional. And here with me today is Mark Ewing, Group Product Manager with Google Meet. Mark, how you doing?
Mark Ewing: Great to be here, Craig.
Craig Durr: Good.
Mark Ewing: Yeah, really exciting time.
Craig Durr: It’s no surprise that Google is taking part in this event with ISE being this world’s largest event and Google Workspace being the world’s largest productivity suite. I mean, you have something along the lines of 3 billion users worldwide. And Google Meet winds up being such an integral part of that experience. This is what’s enabling that video conferencing and video collaboration within that environment. Now, share with me what you’re doing there at Google Meet, and a little bit about the passion that you have behind this.
Mark Ewing: Sure. So I’m the lead product manager for Google Meet rooms and Google Meet hardware. And I’m actually a relative newcomer to the space. I’ve been here for just a little over a year, and I jumped into it because it’s a really, really exciting time to be working in this space. The pandemic made video conferencing ubiquitous, and over the last year or so, people are coming from completely remote at home to a new hybrid way of working. It’s a massive paradigm shift, and we’re at the tip of the spear. And it’s a really exciting place to be. We get to impact users in meaningful ways every day. So it’s kind of a product manager’s dream.
Craig Durr: I bet. Now, one of the great things I’m really excited about here is the level of innovation that you’ve been bringing to this place now, right now. We’ve heard some announcements, but now we’re seeing some of this innovation actually being available to customers. Why don’t you share with me some of the latest innovations we’re talking about here?
Mark Ewing: So we’re really excited to have just launched Zoom interoperability. Now, interoperability is a really important part of our product story because we care deeply about the user experience that our users have on Google Meet. But we know that they need to make calls on other video conferencing platforms occasionally throughout their day. So with Zoom interoperability, you can make Zoom calls from Google Meet hardware. You can also make Meet calls from Zoom rooms, and you can do that scheduled or ad hoc. And this is really just an exciting new addition to our stable of interoperability partners like Webex and Pexip, which we continue to support.
Craig Durr: The interoperability story, I love the fact that you guys are focusing on that. Now, one of the other areas of your innovation is really exciting to me is what you’re doing in the room. Why don’t you talk to me about that Google Meet experience and what you guys are calling the adaptive framing technology?
Mark Ewing: Yeah, absolutely. And that’s how we refer to the overall experience that pulls in the best camera intelligence from our third party OEM partners who we’re really excited to work with. Now, the major problem that we’re trying to solve here is we all spent a year or so dialed in from our remote laptops where you have a personalized camera feed, your name on the bottom of the tile. Everybody knows who you are. You’re represented well. You come back into the conference room, and nobody can see it. They don’t know. It’s a frustrating experience. And camera intelligence is just one key way to enable that experience, make it better, make it more inclusive.
Now, we’re really excited to be working with Huddley and Logitech on their latest camera intelligence technologies, continuous framing, speaker tracking, be introduced into the room. And we’ll also be working with them on multi-camera experiences. Now, for series one, we’ll work with Huddley on a three camera experience that’ll be coming out a little later this year. And then we’re also working with Logitech with their newly announced Sight AI camera.
Craig Durr: That’s fantastic. I love these partnerships. Now there’s some other features. You know which one I really love is I love the companion mode that you guys have enabled. Talk to me about that one.
Mark Ewing: Yeah, absolutely. Similar type of problem. You’re used to being able to raise your hand, do chats on the call, all these things from your laptop at home, super easy. You come back into the room, where are my tools for doing that? Companion mode solves that problem. Now, we’re really excited about it. It exists on your laptop now. At Cloud Next last year we announced mobile form factors coming, purpose-built experience, kind of like your remote control for the call right there in your hand. And we’re also introducing room check-ins via companion mode, which will allow us to show users in the room, attached to the room that they’re actually in. We think that identity of people in the room is a really important key piece for people on the remote call in the room and in the call to really understand and see who’s here, who am I interacting with?
Craig Durr: I love that. I’m going to go off of that. I remember seeing this. This is where, actually, it’s not just showing conference room A. It is showing that Craig and Mark are present in there. So on that far end experience, I have a more personalized understanding of what’s taking place in that room.
Mark Ewing: Absolutely. Yeah. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. You get the names listed on the tile, the names nested in the participant list. And then when you actually participate, when you raise your hand, it’s not the room raising its hand. It’s Mark Ewing in the conference room raising his hand. And it just adds a much more personalized and inclusive element to participation that gives everybody a level playing field across the-
Craig Durr: I love that. Meeting equity’s an important part. So we’re here at the ISE. What’s going to take place if I walk down to the booth? What am I going to see there?
Mark Ewing: We got a number of different solutions on display. We’ve got our room kits. We’ve got all-in-ones from Avocor. But I want to highlight our recent announcement of Google Meet on Android appliances. With Poly, which is on the booth, you can get a full demo. And soon to come, Logitech will be launching Poly in Q1 and Logitech in Q3. We’re really excited about getting those out to the market.
Craig Durr: Well, this is fantastic. You have a lot of great innovations, a lot of great customer-centric features that you’re bringing to bear. It is really exciting to see what you guys are doing at Google Meet. Mark, thank you so much for your time.
Mark Ewing: Really appreciate it, Craig. Thanks.
Craig Durr: Take care. All right, everyone, we’ll see you down on the floor at ISE. Thank you.
Author Information
As Practice Lead - Workplace Collaboration, Craig focuses on developing research, publications and insights that clarify how the workforce, the workplace, and the workflows enable group collaboration and communication. He provides research and analysis related to market sizing and forecasts, product and service evaluations, market trends, and end-user and buyer expectations. In addition to following the technology, Craig also studies the human elements of work - organizing his findings into the workforce, the workplace, and the workflows – and charting how these variables influence technologies and business strategies.
Prior to joining Wainhouse, now a part of The Futurum Group, Craig brings twenty years of experience in leadership roles related to P&L management, product development, strategic planning, and business development of security, SaaS, and unified communication offerings. Craig's experience includes positions at Poly, Dell, Microsoft, and IBM.
Craig holds a Master of Business Administration from the Texas McCombs School of Business as well as a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Tulane University.
