I've tried Jitsi Meet and found it to be smooth. During a hangout call with a group of ~8 friends I introduced it as an alternative. User experience comparison:
Onboarding:
Jitsi: Click a URL. No accounts.
Hangouts: Google account. Need to individually invite other Google accounts.
Video Quality:
Jitsi: Decent, slightly better than hangouts.
Hangouts: Passable but grainy.
Video Layout:
Jitsi: Automatically big-screens current speaker, shows small screens of others. Has option to tile to equally size screens.
Hangouts: Same.
Conclusion: Friends preferred Hangouts.
It's quite disheartening that "average users" shun 1 click URL room creation with superior video and audio quality for manually adding contacts. And that's without any considerations for free software vs. Google panopticon. They would rather tolerate a multi-step process of sharing gmail accounts, asking the same person for their email repeatedly.
Onboarding: Jitsi: Click a URL. No accounts. Hangouts: Google account. Need to individually invite other Google accounts.
Video Quality: Jitsi: Decent, slightly better than hangouts. Hangouts: Passable but grainy.
Video Layout: Jitsi: Automatically big-screens current speaker, shows small screens of others. Has option to tile to equally size screens. Hangouts: Same.
Conclusion: Friends preferred Hangouts.
It's quite disheartening that "average users" shun 1 click URL room creation with superior video and audio quality for manually adding contacts. And that's without any considerations for free software vs. Google panopticon. They would rather tolerate a multi-step process of sharing gmail accounts, asking the same person for their email repeatedly.