Google Meet has added nearly all of the features it outlined earlier this year, including polling, hand-raising, and blurred bokeh-style backgrounds. Now it's continuing its assault on Zoom by introducing a number of improvements to breakout rooms, along with expanded availability of the feature.

Breakouts rooms launched for G Suite Enterprise for Education customers a few months ago. The feature allows hosts to split a group off into multiple smaller sessions, and then bring them all back together after a set amount of time. Starting today, breakout room participants will be able to ask for help from the moderator, who will be able to see which rooms are requesting assistance and join them to provide it.

A breakout room in action.

Additionally, moderators can set a timer to appear in breakout rooms so that participants can keep track of how long they have until the main meeting is called back together. Dial-in phone participants can also join breakout rooms now, with support for anonymous users coming in two weeks.

Breakout room functionality is also expanding to Google Workspace, Essentials, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, and Enterprise Plus customers. Google might have been caught sleeping at the wheel when Zoom took over the video conferencing market earlier this year, but it's clear that the company isn't backing down from the fight.

Source: Google