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MAI LOWE: Hi.
I'm Mai, and I'm a product manager for Google Meet.
Today I'm really excited to announce that your users will
be able to connect and engage with your app through Google
Meet with a new feature called live sharing.
First, I'll speak a little to why
we're focused on shared experiences in Google Meet.
Next, I'll cover how we're enabling
you to bring these shared experiences to your users.
Then I'll tell you how your users
will discover the feature.
And then Viraj, a PM on the YouTube team,
will come in and tell you about what this feature looks
like in YouTube, and give you a glimpse of what the team did
to integrate with meet
We'll end with details on how you can join our early access
program and try out the SDK yourselves, which
we hope you'll want to do by the time you finish
watching this session.
All right, let's dive in.
First, let's take a step back and talk
about why shared experiences are even important to us right now.
Why would this be an area that is exciting to bring to users,
and why do we believe this would help you bring
a new dimension to your app?
Here's a great quote by John Dewey that
says, "things gain meaning when used in shared
experience or joint action."
And when we think about why that might be true,
it's because human bonds are formed
through shared experiences.
Doing things together, sharing things with each other
are such critical elements in establishing and nurturing
relationships, and that, in turn,
is the foundation of being human.
So sharing experiences is something humans
gravitate towards and find rewarding, naturally.
But of course, like everything else in life
and the world, what sharing experiences actually
looks like changes with time.
And most recently, this area has changed really fast
accelerated, by the global pandemic
and being physically apart.
Some of these trends were already becoming apparent even
before the pandemic, because people are more mobile now,
and travel has become both easier and more accessible.
Alongside this, or partly because of this,
technology has evolved, and of course,
will continue to evolve to make connecting across geographies
easier and better.
We have seen people address these changes
by stitching their own solutions together-- for example,
texting while watching a show together,
playing a song while on a video call, group chatting
while watching a basketball game.
And so we see this moment as both a challenge
and an opportunity to make that shared experience easier,
more seamless, more fun.
After all, Google Meet's mission is
to help strengthen social connections.
So we set out to build a platform that
enables developers like you to do just that.
And with that, I'm super excited to announce Meet live sharing.
Today we will showcase how you can bring your users together
in new, easy, and exciting ways by integrating
your app with Google Meet.
You may be thinking, hey, that sounds cool,
but what is this live sharing actually?
So let me tell you.
Live sharing is a combination of Meet's state sync API plus
the operating system's picture-in-picture--
or PIP for short--
that allows for real-time synced content and shared controls
across devices for users.
This makes the experience for your users
look and feel as if they were really together,
deepening connections and sharing moments
all right inside your app.
This feature will work across all the major platforms--
Android, iOS, and the web.
And it even works with Chromecast,
so your users can cast your app's content
onto the big screen while still connecting with their friends
and family over Meet.
More than anything, we want you to meet your users
where they are and wherever their friends may be.
So let me share a little bit about each of these components.
Our new state sync API will let you sync your app's content
across devices and platforms.
Meet will serve as the backbone to your distribution
of app-specific metadata.
We built a transport mechanism for you in such a way
so that what you send and receive is opaque to us,
and this gives you the maximum flexibility
to tailor the experience for your users
based on variables that you set.
By using our API to sync state across devices,
your users will be seeing the same content at the same time
and have shared controls across everyone in the Meet.
So for example, when someone pauses,
the content is paused for everyone.
Or when someone chooses something new to share,
everyone sees the new content at the same time.
But the shared element of the experience
goes beyond sharing controls and content selection.
Your users will be able to see and engage
with their friends and family throughout all
of this because of Google Meet.
We make this possible by leveraging
the OS-level picture-in-picture, and this
lets your users see their loved ones over video
while still leaving maximum real estate
on the device for your content.
All right, so now that I've talked
about what the components of live sharing are,
the next question would be, well,
where's this going to show up?
And how would my users discover live sharing?
Fear not.
We've worked really hard to make sure your users will
find live sharing once you integrate our SDK.
In fact, there are three entry points to the experience.
The first two can be found by users
while they're in a Meet call, and the third one
is found in your app's UI.
So let me tell you a little bit about each one of those.
In the first entry point, a user's in a video call
and finds your app listed in our Activities menu.
They can then click through and begin live sharing from there.
If they either don't have your app or any other conditions
you want your users to meet, such as a specific tier
or some kind of premium status, the user will be prompted
to install the app in the app store,
and we would [? deflate ?] them there,
or they will be asked to upgrade to the tier that you ask for.
Quick side note here--
this is a really great way to get new users into your app.
When you're current users or live sharing with their friends
and family, they'll be prompted to install your app
if they don't already have it.
All right, so in the second entry point,
the user is also in a video call already,
and in this case also knows that your app supports live sharing.
This is most relevant to those users who have already
used the feature in your app and are coming back
for another time.
In this case, they can skip the Activities menu,
navigate directly to their home screen, find your app,
and go to livestream from there.
In the third entry point, the user
is simply browsing their phone, finds
your app and some cool content, and so
wants to start sharing it with someone they know.
They can enter the experience directly from a button
that you put into your UI.
This button will spin up a link for a video call
that the user can then share with others to begin
a live sharing experience.
All right, so I've let you know about our exciting new feature
in all the ways your users can discover it.
I'm also excited to let you know that we've already been working
with a few early partners who are integrating
our SDK in preparation for our launch in their apps
later this year.
That's been really fun to do.
And so we thought, for you to really get
a sense of live sharing, it's easiest to see
what it looks like when it's already integrated.
For that, I'm excited to pass it on to Viraj
from the YouTube team.
He will show you how YouTube has integrated Meet live sharing,
and will give you some insight into what it
takes to build it yourself.
Take it away, Viraj.
VIRAJ MAHESH: Hi.
I'm Viraj, a product manager at YouTube.
We're really excited about partnering with Google Meet
to enable our viewers to watch YouTube together.
I'll walk you through how YouTube
is using Meet live sharing and how you can get started.
Meet is a natural partner for YouTube,
allowing us to meet our users where
they are in video calls with their friends and family.
Users will need a YouTube Premium subscription
to initiate a Meet live share.
YouTube Premium lets users immerse in the content they
love without any stream ads.
Once a premium member starts to Meet live share,
everyone in the call can join in and watch together even
without a membership.
If users are already in a call, they
can use the Meet Activities menu to jump to YouTube
and start watching together.
Every user watches in their own YouTube app,
so they can use the features they love, like Home, Search,
and Saved Videos, to find something to watch together.
Users can also navigate on their own to the YouTube app
and use the Share menu to start watching together.
And finally, users can use the Share menu to start a new call
and invite their friends to watch with them,
perfect for when they find that hilarious new video
and want to see their friends' reactions.
Next, let's talk about what you need to do to support
live share in your app.
First, you'll need to initialize the Meet co-activity library.
This gives you an instance of a Meet client, which
is how you'll connect to the meeting
and enable users to watch together.
Using the Meet client, you can join the co-activity
and set up your handlers to respond
to changes in the meeting status,
as well as synchronize user activity.
Meeting state handler allows you to get notified
when the meeting state changes, and then respond appropriately.
For example, when another user in the meeting
starts an activity, you'll want to respond to that by prompting
the current user to join.
When the meeting ends, you'll need
to end the session, including any cleanup that's
required for your app.
Next, you want to make sure that the actions the current user
takes are reported to meet so that they
can be broadcast to everyone on the call
and keep things in sync.
For YouTube, this includes actions
such as pausing, resuming, seeking, and adjusting
the playback speed.
You'll need to use the Meet co-watching instance
you created during initialization to do this.
The opposite scenario is responding to an action
that another user takes.
You'll be notified about their actions
through the co-watching controller,
and need to update the app state to respond.
For example, if one user pauses playback,
you'll want to pause the current user's playback
to keep things in sync.
Note that automatically adjusting to a user's action
isn't always the right thing to do.
For example, video streaming apps
may want to allow a small amount of slack
in the synchronization.
Seeks may cause the user's playback to buffer,
so you should only speak to the current position
when the user has fallen significantly behind.
All right, let's sum up.
Meet live sharing unlocks new experiences in your app,
and it's a great way to bring your users together.
A great benefit for developers is reaching new audiences
and providing more value to users.
And lastly, it's easy to adopt the new SDK.
So if you'd like to join YouTube in integrating
with Meet live sharing, join the early access program.
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