Have you ever thought of pretending to your friend or colleague that you are on a beach near the equator? Google Meet is here for you. Google is introducing (Opens in a new window) new 360-degree virtual backgrounds for video calls on the platform, which work on iOS and Android devices.
The backgrounds change depending on where your phone or tablet is positioned. Using your device’s gyroscope, the screen reflects your movements and moves as you move. In a blog post, Google said Meet users can choose “multiple” new 360 backgrounds on video calls.
One of these backgrounds is a beach while another shows a temple. As The Verge notes (Opens in a new window), it makes a refreshing change from Meet’s current filters, including one that turns you into a cat and another that transplants your face onto a strawberry.
The move comes after Google rolled out emoji reactions(Opens in a new window) for Meet in January, including Heart, Thumbs Up, Party Popper, Clap, Happiness, Amazing ‘, ‘thinking’, ‘crying’ and ‘thumbs down’. Video conferencing giant Zoom has long had a massive library of reactions that far outstrip Meets.
Google also announced an update to Google Chat that allows developers to add interactive widgets like checkboxes, radio buttons, and dropdowns to chat app cards published in the chat message stream.
In less digestible news for the company, Google employees took to their internal forum Memegem earlier this month to blast CEO Sundar Pichai for the company’s handling of the launch of Bard, its competitor to hugely popular AI chatbot ChatGPT.
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According to CNBC, which viewed the internal news, staffers described the Bard announcement as “rushed,” “botched, and “un-googley.”
The allegations came after Google pushed ahead with its announcement of Bard the same week Microsoft showed how its Bing search engine will integrate ChatGPT technology.
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Source: www.pcmag.com
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