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.

An AI-assisted analysis of public evidence — not a hands-on test.

Every score, rationale and verdict on this page is AI-generated. Every claim cites the source it was read from. Nothing here is a human star review — and no score can be bought. How scores are made →

Method and versions

The IT Administrator v1.0 · The Security Officer v1.0 · The Works Council Advocate v1.0 · The Educator v1.0 · The Accessibility Advocate v1.0 · The Skeptic v1.0 · rubric v1 · evaluated 16 Sep 2026

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

The Works Council Advocate

Weighted verdict

A recorded meeting is personal data about everyone in it. Wants to know who may record, who is told, how long it is kept, and whether attention tracking or attendance analytics can be switched off outright. Reads engagement scoring as surveillance with a chart.

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

Scored by The Works Council Advocate

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 Works Council Advocate

Participant capacity is published per plan (100/150/500/1000) with 24-hour meetings, in-domain live streaming and a hardware-room add-on, which is genuinely strong scale. But the evidence is silent on screen sharing, breakout rooms, host moderation, waiting rooms and what happens on a constrained connection — undocumentable mechanics cannot be relied on for a works assembly. 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 Works Council Advocate

Nothing documents any encryption mechanism for Meet media, key handling, lobbies, passcodes or admission control; the only security language is that affiliates and trusted businesses process data under 'appropriate confidentiality and security measures', which is a promise, not a documented mechanism. Judged on documented mechanism, the evidence offers none. 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 Works Council Advocate

The Meet product pages were captured twice and yielded no evidence of browser joining, guest access by link, dial-in, captions or any accessibility statement — the only telephony in the evidence is a separately sold Voice add-on, which is not a way to phone into a meeting. Absence of any evidenced joining path beyond a signed-in client lands at the bottom anchor. 1 1 2

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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 Works Council Advocate

Recording appears from Standard onward and attendance tracking is sold as a Plus feature with no documented off-switch — co-determination over analytics, my central demand, is unmet. Generic per-service deletion, account auto-deletion, Vault retention at Plus and vague admin powers to 'restrict your ability to delete or edit' exist, but nothing on who is told a recording starts, consent, recording storage region, or access logs. 3 2

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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 Works Council Advocate

Identity tooling is real (Secure LDAP at Plus, Cloud Identity Premium and context-aware access at Enterprise) and the Meet hardware add-on gives room-system support, but no documented API, SCIM, webhooks or embedding appear anywhere. Cloud-only with no self-hosted or private-cloud option in the evidence caps it. 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 Works Council Advocate

The vendor is Google LLC of Mountain View, the UK controller is also Google LLC, subprocessors are unnamed 'affiliates and other trusted businesses', and data residency is unconfirmed on the vendor's own pages. Google Ireland as EEA controller and the Enterprise-only 'data regions' feature are the sole EU anchors, and where media and metadata travel is entirely undocumented. 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 Works Council Advocate

Three of four tiers carry public EUR per-user prices with billing period, annual discount, seat caps (300 on lower tiers) and pooled storage allowances, so an invoice is computable for small host counts. But Enterprise — the only tier with 1000-participant meetings and data regions — is 'Contact sales', the Meet Hardware and Voice add-ons are sold separately with no prices, dial-in rates are absent entirely, and VAT treatment is unstated. 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.

Legal entity	Not determined ⚠ unverified	—	uncited Report an error
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

Evidence ages. The oldest capture behind this page is from 31 Aug 2026. Vendors change pricing and policies without notice; every fact reflects its source as of the capture date shown in the registry.
Weak sourcing — Legal entity, Data residency, Subprocessors. Not confirmed on the vendor’s own pages as captured.
AI can misread a source. Extraction and judgement are automated; a citation guarantees traceability, not infallibility. If something here is wrong, say so — no account needed, every report is decided within 5 business days, and accepted corrections are published.

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.

146 product facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
35 pricing facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
21 legal facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
13 compliance facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
8 support facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
7 integrations facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
1 data fact could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and was left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
1 subprocessors fact could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and was left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
3 sovereignty dimensions could not be confirmed on the vendor’s own pages and are shown as unknown. Know more? Tell us
6 of the readings below were written against an earlier fact sheet — a fact has been corrected, added or pulled since. Until the panel next runs on this product you are reading the older judgement. Know more? Tell us

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Sources (8)

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

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