Google Meet Likes to Hang Up
Published by marco on
I’ve used Google Meet twice in the last month. In both conversations, I exited the meeting room completely inadvertently and was forced to scramble back, profusely apologizing for my lack of technical proficiency.
It all starts with the Google Meet page losing focus, then “detaching” itself from the main window. This seems like a “feature” that prevents the user from switching tabs away from an open meeting. It’s bossy and intrusive.
The first time this happened, I ended up looking at a large video of myself in the main window. In a smaller, floating window, I saw myself again and the other person in a postage stamp overlaid on that. It was not a pleasant video-call experience, so I tried to reattach the video to get back to the way it was. One click and it hung up.
The second time it happened, it just showed the following, with my meeting continuing in the detached, floating window.
Being a naive and trusting person, I clicked the “Reattach tab” button. Instead of doing what it said, it summarily ejected me from the meeting room.
Google reassured me that my “meeting is safe” but that I was no longer a part of it. I have no idea what sort of a feature they think this is.
It is entirely too easy to leave a meeting room. It doesn’t ask you whether you’re sure you’d like to leave. It just ejects you. It does so even if you do something innocent like try to get back to a usable version of their UI when they’ve split everything into floating and strangely sized windows.
I honestly can’t believe that this is a professional software used by dozens of millions of people, produced by a trillion-dollar company. Companies pay for this. With money 💰.
🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️