Google just pushed hybrid meetings closer to reality. The company's experimental Google Beam platform now supports group meetings with true-to-life sizing and spatial audio, aiming to bridge the disconnect between remote and in-office workers. Mohamed Abdelgany, Group Product Manager for Google Beam, announced the update today, marking a significant step beyond traditional grid-based video conferencing. While competitors like Zoom and Microsoft Teams dominate the market with incremental AI features, Google's betting on presence technology to redefine how distributed teams collaborate.
Google is making a play for the future of hybrid work, and it's not about adding another AI assistant to your video calls. The company just unveiled group meeting support for Google Beam, its experimental video conferencing platform that renders participants in true-to-life size with spatial audio. The update, announced by Group Product Manager Mohamed Abdelgany, represents a fundamental rethink of how remote collaboration should work.
Instead of the familiar grid of floating heads that's defined video meetings since the pandemic, Beam recreates the experience of sitting across from colleagues. Participants appear at their actual size, positioned as they would be in a physical conference room, with audio that shifts based on where people are sitting. It's the kind of presence technology that's been promised for years but rarely delivered at scale.
The timing matters. Enterprise video conferencing has become a commoditized battlefield where Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet trade incremental AI features like background noise suppression and auto-framing. According to recent market analysis, the global video conferencing market hit $7.8 billion in 2025, with hybrid work models driving 68% of enterprise adoption. But user satisfaction has plateaued - teams report feeling just as disconnected on video as they did three years ago.
Google Beam emerged from Google Research as an internal experiment to solve that disconnect. The platform uses advanced computer vision and spatial audio processing to create what the team calls "perceptual equality" - the idea that remote participants should have the same presence and influence as people in the room. Early testing focused on one-on-one conversations, where the technology could refine how it handles eye contact, body language, and conversational dynamics.
Expanding to group meetings introduces exponentially more complexity. The system needs to track multiple participants simultaneously, render them at appropriate scales based on camera positioning, and create a cohesive audio field that doesn't collapse into chaos. Google's approach leans on machine learning models trained to understand meeting room layouts and participant positioning, then reconstruct that spatial arrangement for remote viewers.
The announcement positions Google to differentiate Google Workspace beyond productivity features. While Microsoft has pushed Teams integration with Office apps and Zoom has expanded into contact centers and events, Google's betting that presence technology - making remote work feel less remote - could be the unlock for enterprise customers still struggling with hybrid models.
It's worth noting that Beam remains an experiment, not a product shipping to millions of Workspace customers tomorrow. Google Research has a history of incubating ambitious projects that either graduate to products or inform broader platform development. Google Glass failed as consumer hardware but its AR research shaped Android's spatial computing capabilities. Project Starline, Google's 3D video booth, demonstrated presence technology but hasn't reached commercial scale.
The enterprise video market is watching closely. Spatial audio and life-size rendering require significant bandwidth and processing power - challenges that limited earlier immersive meeting platforms. If Google can deliver this experience without requiring specialized hardware or fiber connections, it could reset expectations for what hybrid meetings should feel like. If the tech demands too much infrastructure, Beam risks becoming another impressive demo that never escapes the lab.
Competitors aren't standing still. Meta continues pushing VR meetings through Horizon Workrooms, arguing that avatars in virtual spaces solve presence better than video ever could. Cisco has invested heavily in Webex Hologram for mixed reality collaboration. And dozens of startups are chasing variations on the same problem - how to make distributed teams feel like they're actually together.
What makes Google's move significant is the focus on evolution rather than revolution. Beam doesn't ask users to strap on headsets or learn new interfaces. It takes the familiar video meeting and enhances it with technology that should feel invisible. That pragmatism could be what finally bridges the gap between impressive research demos and tools people actually use every day.
Google's group meeting upgrade to Beam signals where the company thinks hybrid work is headed - toward experiences that eliminate the psychological distance between remote and in-office teams. Whether the technology can scale beyond research labs into the messy reality of enterprise IT deployments remains the open question. But by focusing on presence over features, Google's staking out differentiated ground in a market that's felt increasingly commoditized. For the millions of workers still toggling between home and office, that evolution can't come soon enough.
