Google Reveals 360-Degree Virtual Backgrounds For Meet Calls

pcmag.com:

Ever thought of pretending you’re on a beach somewhere close to the equator to your friend or colleague? Google Meet has you covered. Google is rolling out(Opens in a new window) new 360-degree virtual backgrounds for video calls on the platform and it will work across iOS and Android devices. 

The backgrounds will change depending on where your phone or tablet is positioned. Using your device’s gyroscope the screen will mirror your movements, moving when you move. In a blog post, Google said Meet users will be able to choose “several” new 360-degree backgrounds during video calls. 

One of those 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 which include 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 that included the heart, thumbs-up, party popper, clap, joy, astonished, thinking, cry, and thumbs-down emoji. The video conferencing giant Zoom has long held a huge library of reactions that vastly outnumber Meets.

Google also announced an update to Google Chat that will allow developers to include interactive widgets like checkboxes, radio buttons, and dropdowns in Chat app cards that are posted in the Chat message stream. 

In less easily digestible news for the company, Google employees took to their internal forum Memegem earlier this month to slam CEO Sundar Pichai for the firm’s handling of the launch of Bard, its competitor to the wildly popular AI chatbot, ChatGPT. 

According to CNBC, who viewed the internal messages, staffers described the Bard announcement as “rushed,”