Microsoft’s Teams group addresses bandwidth issues for people using the collaboration platform to work from home.
Google has adapted Measure to make sure it is suitable for holding video meetings at home or at work in limited circumstances, such as when the children stream videos at the same time as a work meeting.
Microsoft is now tackling the same challenge for Teams – the chat, video and collaboration platform that has at least 115 million active users daily.
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The company takes a turn from Zoom’s strategy, which prioritizes audio over video to make sure users are heard about a weak broadband connection.
“Whether you want to store data or are in a location with a weak or limited network connection, sometimes it’s helpful to limit the amount of data you use during a video call,” Microsoft explains in an update of his road map.
“With a new low-data mode, users can limit the amount of data used during Teams video calls, as well as set up different settings based on network availability.”
Google also seeks to address poor network connections for people working from home by automatically adjusting the use of resources, depending on network conditions, at home or on a corporate network.
In January, Google Workspace users unveiled a new troubleshooting tool for Google Meet that shows users why a local configuration might be a bad audio or video experience. For remote workers, it also provided a new preview experience to help users sort out laggy videos and muted microphones before entering a call.
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Microsoft is launching its low-end data feature to users this month. As OnMSFT notes, the feature allows users to limit the amount of data used in video calls.
The Microsoft 365 and Teams group was involved in the pandemic and closed the feature gaps between Teams and Zoom. One of the biggest was the lack of a 49-person view, which Microsoft addressed in the latter part of 2020.
Zoom, in turn, reported fourth-quarter stellar earnings rapidly approaching $ 1 billion per quarter, compared to $ 106 million for the same period in 2019. The video conferencing business has a 400-year year-on-year growth seen small and medium enterprises.