Earlier this month, Samsung Electronics revealed that its TVs will soon stop supporting Google Assistant, and now the company has said Google Meet will also be removed from its TVs.
That’s according to a report in SamMobile, which said Google Meet, which is Google’s video conferencing application, will be discontinued on Samsung’s Smart TVs in March. The move will likely impact thousands of users, and will come at around the same time as the company drops support for Google Assistant on March 1.
It’s not clear how many Samsung TV owners actually use Google Meet, but the app has always been one of the better video calling services for Smart TVs due to its straightforward nature. To use the service, all that’s required is to connect a webcam to the TV, open the app and call your contacts directly. Ideal for anyone who happens to be sat on the sofa and is not watching anything particularly interesting on the TV.
Google Meet hasn’t been available on Samsung TVs for that long. The app became available in October 2022 via an update for that year’s Samsung TV models, and was also installed on the company’s 2023 models, as well as a number of Samsung Tizen monitors. However, this year’s TVs and monitors do not feature the app, and it seems we now know why that is the case.
SamMobile said in its report that Google Meet will stop working on March 9, barely a week after Google Assistant is thrown onto the scrapheap. While the company hasn’t yet confirmed any of this, it has removed its support page for Google Meet, which seems to suggest the reports are true.
It’s not clear if the actual decision to remove Google Meet was taken by Samsung or Google. When the company announced it’s discontinuing support for Google Assistant, it cited Google’s policy changes as the reason for that decision, but never said which policy it was talking about. It was speculated that the move could be related to Google’s plans to integrate generative artificial intelligence capabilities into the service, which could result in changes to the company’s data collection habits.
That said, the decision could be an effort by Samsung to reduce its reliance on Google’s services, as the company offers its own voice assistant, called Bixby, and supports other video calling apps. Then again, it could be that Google wants to focus more on its own TV platforms and is purposely making life more difficult for Samsung with its policy changes. By pushing Samsung to drop support for its services, it means more exclusive features for Google TVs and Android TVs, which could help it increase its market penetration.
