If your co-workers or friends don't show up within the first five minutes of your scheduled video call, you'll soon be able to blame Google for why you left early. The tech giant will start rolling out an update for Google Meet so that it will prompt you to exit meetings when you're the only person in it. Say, you log into a team meeting, but nobody shows up within five minutes: A notification will show up asking if you're still there and if you'd like to keep waiting or to leave the call. If you don't respond within two minutes, you'll automatically get kicked out.
Other services like Discord already implement similar measures to prevent wasting bandwidth. Zoom also has a time limit for idle meetings, but it lasts for up to 40 minutes. Google didn't say whether it introducing the new feature as a way to stop wasting resources, but the company is hoping that it can help prevent you from unintentionally broadcasting your video and audio feed. Regardless, you can easily switch it off if you don't want to be prompted to leave your meetings. The feature will be on by default, but you can go to General under Settings to toggle it off.
Google will gradually roll out the "leave empty calls" feature starting on April 11th, and it will take 15 days to reach all desktop and iOS users. It will also be available for Android users "soon."