VIDEO CONFERENCING
Google Meet runs in Google's cloud — a US company subject to the CLOUD Act — and does not offer a self-hosted or on-prem option today. Polybase runs calls in our EU cloud, your own VPC, or fully air-gapped on your servers through a self-hosted LiveKit server.
In Polybase, a call is something you start, not something you schedule. Click the call button in any channel or DM and you're talking — screen share, live captions, noise suppression and background blur included. The call chat turns messages into tasks with one click, and the notes, documents and follow-ups stay in the same channel afterwards. Deploy in our EU cloud, your own VPC, or fully air-gapped on your servers.
Google Meet is the path of least resistance for teams already living in Google Workspace. It opens in the browser, Calendar and Gmail create the links for you, call quality is solid, and paid Workspace tiers add recording and noise cancellation. But Meet is a meeting tool, not a workspace: the conversation before the call and the follow-up after it happen somewhere else, and everything runs in Google's cloud — with no self-hosted option today.
Review how Polybase and Google Meet approach the work your team needs to do.
Based on publicly available information about Google Meet as of August 2026. Products evolve — plans and features may have changed; please verify details with the vendor. Spotted something out of date? Let us know at [email protected].
A practical sequence for planning the change, moving the useful material and introducing the new workspace.
Meet recordings live in Google Drive — download the ones worth keeping before you wind the account down. Polybase preserves context differently: the chat, documents and tasks around each call stay in the channel, searchable long after the call ends.
Like Meet, Polybase needs nothing installed — WebRTC calls work in any modern browser, with no plugins or separate URLs. Desktop and mobile apps are available.
Set up channels that mirror how your team actually works. Each one carries its own chat, tasks, documents and a call button — so the place you discuss something is also the place you call about it.
For the ad-hoc calls that used to need a Meet link, just start a call in the relevant channel or DM. For genuinely scheduled events, Polybase's calendar sends standard ICS invites with RSVP — they land in Google Calendar or any other calendar your guests use.
During the call, turn chat messages into tracked tasks with one click. Afterwards, capture decisions in a channel doc. Nothing scatters into a drive of orphaned recordings — the follow-up lives where the conversation did.
The additional workspace capabilities to consider when comparing Polybase with Google Meet.
Meet assumes a meeting: someone creates an event, Calendar makes a link, everyone joins at the appointed time. In Polybase you click the call button in the channel you're already in and teammates join when they hear the ring — like walking over to someone's desk.
A Meet call starts blank and ends blank — the discussion that led to it sits in Gmail or Google Chat, and the follow-up scatters after. A Polybase call belongs to a channel, so the history before it and the decisions after it stay in one searchable place.
Every Polybase call has a chat panel, and any message in it becomes a tracked task with one click — decisions survive the call instead of dissolving when the window closes. Automatic call summaries and action items are coming soon.
Polybase runs WebRTC calls powered by a self-hosted LiveKit media server, encrypted in transit (DTLS-SRTP) — with screen share, live captions, noise suppression, background blur and a picture-in-picture window, on every plan rather than gated behind Workspace tiers.
Meet runs as a cloud service operated by Google, a US-jurisdiction company. Polybase gives you a choice: our EU-region cloud, your own VPC, or a fully air-gapped deployment on your servers — calls use a self-hosted LiveKit server. Your servers, your keys.
Beyond scheduled calls, Polyspace gives your team a 2D spatial office — rooms, proximity audio and video, and shared walls for embeds. The ambient, always-on presence a meetings tool isn't designed for.
Common questions about switching from Google Meet to Polybase.
Zoom is meetings as a destination. Polybase starts calls from the channel you're already in — with captions built in.
See the comparisonLoom records async video; Polybase keeps outcomes as searchable text next to the work — live calls, threads and docs you can self-host.
See the comparison