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Video Conferencing

Google Meet

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Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: not determined

0–5 in half steps. 5 means the rubric's top anchor is met on the evidence.

by Google LLC · workspace.google.com

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Read this page as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.

The Security Officer

Weighted verdict

Wants to know what the vendor can see, and reads "encrypted" as a question rather than an answer. Asks which meetings get end-to-end encryption, what stops working when they do, who holds the keys, and who can walk into a meeting with a link.

Same scores as the panel view — this lens weights them the way this judge cares.

Scored by The Security Officer

The meeting itself

How this is scored

Whether the call works: participant capacity, video and audio quality under load, screen sharing, breakout rooms, moderation, and what happens on a bad connection.

0 — Small meetings only, no screen sharing worth the name, no moderation controls, and the call degrades without telling anyone.

3 — Standard meetings with screen sharing and mute-all, but low participant limits, no breakout rooms and no bandwidth adaptation stated.

5 — Meetings at the scale most teams need with screen sharing, breakout rooms, host moderation, and documented behaviour on constrained connections.

8 — Large meetings and webinars with published capacity limits, per-participant moderation and waiting rooms, layout control, simulcast or adaptive bitrate stated, and reliable behaviour on mobile networks.

10 — Scale and control are engineering claims the vendor stands behind: capacity published per plan and per region, selective forwarding with adaptive quality documented, live streaming, hardware-room support, and diagnostics an admin can read after a bad call.

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The Security Officer

The evidence proves scale and nothing else: 100/150/500/1000 participants published per plan, 24-hour meetings, in-domain live streaming on Enterprise, a hardware add-on and noise cancellation. Not one word on screen sharing, breakout rooms, host moderation, or behaviour on a bad connection — capacity without documented controls doesn't clear the 5 anchor. 2

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Encryption & meeting access

How this is scored

What is actually encrypted and against whom, plus who can get into a meeting. Judged on documented mechanism rather than on the word "encrypted".

0 — Transport encryption only, undocumented; meetings joinable by anyone with a link and no lobby.

3 — TLS in transit and encryption at rest, with the vendor holding all keys; access control is a passcode.

5 — The above plus a lobby or waiting room, host-controlled admission, per-meeting passcodes, and a clear statement that the vendor can technically access media.

8 — Optional end-to-end encryption for meetings with the trade-offs named (which features stop working), documented key handling, SSO-gated joining, and per-meeting access policies.

10 — End-to-end encryption available without surrendering the product — its cryptography documented or open source, key management explained, identity verification for participants, and the vendor stating plainly what it can and cannot see.

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The Security Officer

Nowhere does the evidence state what is encrypted, who holds the keys, or who can get into a meeting — no TLS statement, no E2EE, no lobby, no passcode, no admission control for Meet at all. The only security-adjacent facts are Google-wide privacy machinery (transparency report, deletion process, complaint handling), which say nothing about a meeting; undocumented is the 0-1 floor. 3

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Reach & accessibility

How this is scored

Whether everyone who needs to join can: browser without an install, dial-in, low bandwidth, guests without accounts, captions and keyboard operation.

0 — A desktop client is the only way in; guests must create an account.

3 — Browser joining exists but is degraded, guests can join by link, and there is no dial-in and no accessibility statement.

5 — Full-feature browser joining without an install, guest access by link, mobile apps, and a stated accessibility posture.

8 — Telephone dial-in with numbers listed, live captions, keyboard-navigable and screen-reader-tested interface, and documented low-bandwidth behaviour.

10 — Reach is designed for: browser parity with the client, dial-in across the regions the customer operates in, live captions and translation, a published accessibility conformance report, and a usable experience on a poor mobile connection.

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The Security Officer

Nothing evidences how a single participant joins: no browser joining, no guest access by link, no dial-in, no captions, no accessibility statement anywhere in the evidence. The one adjacent fact is that Google collects mobile network and carrier data — that implies devices exist, not that anyone can reach a meeting; total silence on every element of the anchor is the floor. 3

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Recordings, retention & admin control

How this is scored

A recording is personal data about everyone in the room. Who may record, who is told, where it is stored, how long it lives, and what the works council can switch off.

0 — Anyone can record, storage location unstated, no retention rule, no admin policy.

3 — Host-only recording with a notification, but storage region unstated, retention manual, and no organisation-wide policy control.

5 — Admin policy over who may record, participant notification and consent prompt, stated storage region, and manual deletion that works.

8 — Automatic retention and deletion per policy, recordings encrypted at rest with access logged, transcription handled with its own retention rule, and attendance or analytics features that can be switched off for co-determination.

10 — Built for a works agreement: every recording, transcript and analytics feature independently switchable and documented, retention executed and evidenced, an audit trail of who accessed which recording, and no participant-level behavioural scoring at all.

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The Security Officer

Recording appears from the Standard plan and attendance tracking on Plus, but the evidence never says who may record, whether participants are notified, or where recordings are stored; what exists is generic — domain admins can restrict deletion and privacy settings, and data can auto-delete after set periods — plus Vault retention tooling. Attendance tracking arrives with no evidenced off-switch, which is exactly what a works council will ask me about. 2 3

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Integrations & deployment

How this is scored

Calendar, identity and the wider stack — plus, in this category, whether the product can be run on the customer's own infrastructure at all.

0 — No calendar integration, no SSO, no API; cloud-only with no alternative.

3 — One calendar integration and basic SSO, no API worth building on, cloud-only.

5 — Calendar integration for the major suites, SAML or OIDC SSO, a documented API for scheduling, and room-system support.

8 — The above plus SCIM provisioning, embedding via SDK, webhooks for meeting events, and either a self-hosted option or a documented private-cloud deployment.

10 — Deployment is the customer's choice: a genuine on-premises or private-cloud option with the same features, open protocols or open source, embeddable SDKs, and identity integration that does not require the vendor's directory.

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The Security Officer

Identity plumbing exists — Secure LDAP on Plus, Cloud Identity Premium and DLP on Enterprise — and a Meet Hardware add-on covers room systems, but no calendar integration is named, no SAML/OIDC or documented API appears, and deployment is cloud-only with no alternative evidenced. 2

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European sovereignty

How this is scored

Where media and metadata are processed, who the contracting entity is, which subprocessors carry the traffic. Independently sourced by the sovereignty pipeline; scored here as this buyer weighs it — which in this category is heavily.

0 — Non-EU vendor and contracting entity, media routed through unstated regions, subprocessors unnamed.

3 — EU data residency for storage while media relays or metadata remain non-EU, or the contracting entity sits outside the EU.

5 — EU hosting and an EU contracting entity, but parts of the chain — relays, analytics, support tooling, transcription — are non-EU without an explained safeguard.

8 — Media and metadata processed in the EU on named infrastructure, EU contracting entity, complete subprocessor list published, any non-EU processing named with its legal basis.

10 — Sovereign end to end and evidenced: media never leaves the EU, every subprocessor European, certification published, and an on-premises option that removes the question entirely.

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The Security Officer

The pipeline found jurisdiction, ownership, residency and subprocessor exposure all unknown; the vendor is Google LLC of Mountain View, media routing is unstated, and subprocessors are described only as unnamed 'affiliates and trusted businesses or persons' processing on Google's instructions. Google Ireland is the designated EEA controller and an 'enterprise data regions' feature is named, but neither says where meeting media actually flows — one point, no more. 3 2

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Pricing transparency

How this is scored

Whether a buyer can compute the annual invoice for their host count — including the capacity, dial-in and recording storage they actually need — from public pages alone.

0 — No public prices at all; every tier is a sales conversation.

3 — A per-host headline exists, but participant caps, dial-in minutes or recording storage are unpriced or unmentioned.

5 — Per-host prices public with billing period stated and capacity limits given, but at least one commonly needed piece (webinar capacity, dial-in, storage) sits in an unpriced add-on.

8 — Every tier and add-on priced publicly with per-host maths, capacity limits, dial-in rates, storage allowances, minimum term and VAT treatment stated.

10 — Complete price computability: a calculator producing the annual invoice for a given host count, meeting size and recording volume, including overage and per-region dial-in.

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The Security Officer

Three tiers are computable from the public page — EUR per user with monthly vs 16%-discount annual billing, participant caps of 100/150/500/1000, 24-hour meetings and pooled storage stated. But Enterprise is 'Contact sales', the Meet Hardware and Voice add-ons are 'sold separately' with no prices, and dial-in rates and VAT treatment are never mentioned — a solid 5 pushed to 6 on capacity disclosure. 2

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European sovereignty — proven facts

0 of 4 dimensions proven

Built only from facts shown on the vendor's own pages. A dimension we could not prove is left open, not scored as zero.

Ownership Not determined — uncited Report an error
Data residency Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error
Subprocessors Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error

Where this could be wrong

What we left out

A claim that does not survive our checks costs us the claim, not the page. This is what was taken off this one.

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Sources (8)

The pages every claim on this page was read from — each one checked, dated, and kept verifiable.

  1. 1 Product page workspace.google.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 +1 earlier capture: 11 Sep 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Pricing workspace.google.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 +3 earlier captures: 15 Sep 2026, 11 Sep 2026, 31 Aug 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Privacy policy policies.google.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 +1 earlier capture: 15 Sep 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Terms of service policies.google.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  5. 5 Encryption & meeting access — found from sitemap workspace.google.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  6. 6 Reach & accessibility — found from sitemap www.google.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Recordings, retention & admin control — found from sitemap workspace.google.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Integrations & deployment — found from sitemap workspace.google.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →