Mark
Right now we’re going to have a chat about all things IT and to do that we have Seamus Campbell from Boldacious Digital in Mareeba on the phone. G’day Seamus, how are you.
Seamus
Hey Mark How are you.
Mark
Last week we spoke about, zoom and the popularity of video conferencing that seemed to take off with the enforced hibernation that we’ve got from COVID-19. But that’s not the only one on the market, I think Zoom’s got a head start on everyone else, everyone else playing catch up, are they.
Seamus
Yes, yes, zoom, just, well I’ll do a bad pun and say it “zoomed” ahead of the competition.
Mark
That is a bad pun.
Seamus
But, Microsoft and Google are busy playing catch up because they realised there’s a huge market for this now it’s probably not going to diminish greatly. When we all get back to what we call normal life.
Mark
Whatever that is.
Seamus
So at the moment, Zoom is the easiest to use. It’s got the best features. But, say if we look at Microsoft version which is called Teams. If you work totally within the Microsoft environment, then Teams is possibly a better bet for you. The interface is not as good as Zoom. And originally was a just a chat tool so it’s more like slack than anything else but now it’s video conferencing but also chat and collaboration with Microsoft documents. So, inside the Microsoft environment. This is a really good option and things like if you, if you’re inside the Microsoft environment, you’re going to use Outlook calendar. It’s really easy to book a Team meeting from there, so there are really good arguments for using that, if you’re, you know, totally within Microsoft which you know a lot of workplaces are.
Seamus
And part of the things that that one of the things like all of these all three of these big boys are going to be, including new features and one of the things that Teams is working on at the moment is a noise suppression feature. So they’ve noticed that as people move to a home environment it’s harder to suppress external noises so they are working on a noise suppression feature that works natively with teams.
Seamus
And I suppose on the other side of it, if you work totally within a Google ecosystem so you use Google Calendar Google suite. Then, Google’s Meet, which was called Hangouts is probably a good look for you. Now that’s free, but you do need a Gmail account to get it. And I should say Teams is free if you’ve got office 365, which, you know, 99% of the time if you’ve got, if you’re working in Microsoft you’ve got that anyway.
Mark
Why were they caught on the back foot, hadn’t they realised that the importance of video conferencing or was it just something that they were working on, and then this COVID-19 hit and they were still getting it developed?
Seamus
Probably because I think they were both they both had versions, they weren’t particularly well developed. And I would undoubtedly say that they knew that this was coming, it’s just they were sort of behind Zoom. Don’t forget Zoom is purely video conferencing so that’s, that’s all they concentrate on whereas Microsoft and Google, you know, do all sorts of other things as we know
Mark
I think with Zoom now I’m reading that there are a couple of security and privacy concerns about it but they would be well and truly covered with Microsoft and Google, wouldn’t they?
Seamus
Yeah, and they were caught out, and I think everyone was caught out no one expected the incredible growth that we got in video conferencing.
Seamus
But, zoom to its as a good point of what it’s done is that they’ve been very open about what they’re doing and they’ve put a three-month moratorium on doing any other research and development on their programme, other than security. So, they’ve jumped on the bandwagon and put a whole lot of new stuff in there so zoom version five which is out for most people now has really really beefed up their security. And I should mention here that any use of a video camera, without, specifically, allowing your computer to use that for that specific instance, has got security issues so it’s a general security issue with allowing video camera usage on your computer.
Seamus
And another thing which we should be really wary of is all three of these companies have been asked, What are they doing with the data that they’re collecting and none of them has given really good replies, the best we’ve got is, and I quote, “recordings aren’t directly used for advertising”.
So that’s a nice way out, I would say that we don’t know what they use all this recorded data for
Mark
I mean what we’re hearing about that I mean you take a look at Facebook and what they do. You already take a look at Google and the use of the, I suppose the advertising spectrum of those things is getting a bit out of control we lost a lot of personal securities ages ago.
Seamus
we did yeah, and none of them is particularly good at protecting our privacy and in a way, there’s a sort of a saying around that if you use software that’s free. It always costs money. And if it’s free the product is actually you, your data. So where we’re sort of trading our data for the use of these pretty free bits of software or companies.
Mark
I mean this video thing used to be it used to be Skype is really the be-all and end-all but they’ve been left behind in the background I think. Google with it’s Meet shows 16 people simultaneously on the screen. Microsoft is doing something very, very similar with their own market they’re doing, but I somehow think how important you think videoconferencing will be after his pandemic is gone. Somehow I think this is here stay. Famous things, like a video or telehealth and things like that it’s all here to stay after this is all over.
Seamus
I agree and I believe that’s so too.
So I think all three companies will strive to become the video conferencing thing that people use. And we probably, I mean, I think you do give them your data so I don’t think there’s much you can do about that. But, yeah, they’ll, they’ll each try to outdo each other for the near future. I mean, Google’s newest feature they’ve got is real-time closed captions, which are very very handy but then that’s a text version of what you’ve been saying in your, your meeting.
Again, which is easier then for people to, you know, trawl through or use.
Mark
Hang on you’ve got autocorrect when you are SMS-ing which really mucks the words up – and you are saying this new thing put your spoken word into the written word.
Seamus
Yeah. So, they’ve, I haven’t tried this but apparently it’s very very good so the live closed captions record you know type out what you’re saying. Live obviously, which, it’s all of these things it’s, you know, how handy is it compared to what the downside is.
I mean, zoom, has collaborated with and joined with a mob called rev.com, who normally do, just sort of normal transcription services from verbal to text.
But Rev’s got a live caption beta-programme at the moment with Zoom so Zoom is doing the same thing. And I presume that Microsoft Teams will that will come out fairly soon I mean, it’s hard keeping up with all the things that they’re doing each of them now, they’re all sort of so bent on grabbing this market and it’s a huge market.
Mark
Is there any places on the web, where we can actually look and there’s somebody that’s made comparisons between all three or is that somewhere you’ve just going to do searching yourself to try and find out which is the best one.
Seamus
No well, they’re all different.
They’re all, depending on your usage needs is, is what, which one you should choose. I’ll put this transcription of this up on my website, and I’ve, I did a bit of research so I’ve got about, I don’t know seven or eight links to places that are comparing them so that you can get more detail. And that’ll be on my website in about, probably a couple of hours because I’ve got to transcribe and do all of that thing. But then you can have a look at the links that I’ve found. But, but don’t forget these links are almost out of date. You know, in about a month because that adding new things all the time.
Links Mentioned
- https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2020/04/30/new-tools-help-it-empower-employees-securely-remote-work-world/
- https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/together
- https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/1/21244058/google-meet-microsoft-teams-webex-personal-data-collection-privacy-policy-concerns
- https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/29/21240942/google-meet-free-zoom-response-microsoft-teams-features
- https://zapier.com/blog/google-meet-vs-hangouts/
- https://www.hindustantimes.com/tech/zoom-vs-google-meet-vs-microsoft-teams-which-video-conferencing-app-to-for/story-wnBch1dX58MAC66uCVln3N.html
- https://www.techzine.eu/blogs/collaboration/46302/zoom-vs-google-meet-microsoft-teams-cisco-webex-meetings-bluejeans/
- https://au.pcmag.com/how-to-work-from-home/66389/zoom-vs-microsoft-teams-vs-google-meet-a-videoconferencing-face-off
- https://www.pocket-lint.com/apps/news/151947-zoom-vs-microsoft-teams-vs-google-meet-what-s-the-difference
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