Take Notes for Me: Google Meet AI Note Taker Review

If you’ve used Google Meet lately, you may have seen a pop-up saying Google can now take meeting notes for you using Gemini, Google’s AI assistant.

“Take Notes for Me automatically takes notes, allowing you to focus more during your meetings,” the pop-up says.

This is a new feature for some tiers of paid Google Workspace accounts that, as advertised, can turn your Google Meet calls into an AI summary, along with a transcript.

This isn’t a new concept, though. There are several AI meeting assistant tools available, including Fellow, with the same meeting summarization and transcription functionality, but with better accuracy and more features. Many remote and hybrid organizations are already using an AI meeting assistant to record, transcribe, and summarize meetings — so how does Google Gemini’s “Takes Notes for Me” stack up?

We won’t bury the lead — while Gemini does deliver a summary and transcript and works very well with Google Meet, it simply doesn’t measure up to purpose-built AI note takers. From inaccuracies to sluggish emails to limited language support, it’s clear that Gemini is a basic tool that lacks features like meeting agendas, pre-meeting briefs, and integrations. Plus, if you’re concerned about security and privacy, Gemini may not be the pick for you.

Read on to learn about how Google Gemini’s “Takes Notes for Me” feature works, its limitations, and why an established AI meeting assistant like Fellow is a better choice.

How to take meeting notes with Google Gemini

1. First you need to be in a Business Standard or Business Plus Google Workspace to access “Take Notes for Me.”
2. While in a Google Meet call, click the icon in the top right corner of the screen to open Gemini.
3. Use the checkboxes to select whether you want to transcribe the meeting and/or record the meeting.
4. Click “Start taking notes.” If Host Management is turned on in Google Meet, only the host can complete this step.

Once Gemini begins, the icon in the top right corner can be clicked again if at any point you want to stop note-taking. As well, if someone joins the meeting partway through, they can click the Gemini icon to see a “Summary so far,” detailing what has already been discussed. This functionality already exists in purpose-built AI Meeting Assistants like Fellow, where you can use Ask Fellow Copilot to catch you up to speed on a meeting after joining.

After the meeting, your notes, transcription, and recording will be stored in your Google Drive. Google will also send an email once each item is ready. They will be automatically shared via email with whoever was on the calendar invite for the meeting.

Google Gemini “Take Notes for Me” limitations

Gemini’s “Take Notes for Me” feature delivers an AI summary of what was discussed in a Google Meet call, along with an optional transcript and recording. 

However, it’s worth taking a closer look at the quality of those deliverables, as well as the other limitations that may mean Gemini isn’t the best meeting notes solution for your organization.

1. Slow, inaccurate transcription and a too-simple summary

The most important thing to evaluate about Google Gemini’s “Take Notes for Me” is how accurate and useful the notes and transcript are.

I tested both the summary and transcript for myself by calling a colleague. The first issue is that it takes some time for Google to create these — an AI meeting assistant like Fellow can generate the assets much quicker. The transcript in particular took longer to appear in my Google Drive than the summary. And in both cases, it took significantly longer for the email to arrive in my inbox telling me these files were ready. This will quickly become an issue for anyone in back-to-back meetings that needs to quickly follow-up on calls.

As for the quality, the summary was accurate, but short. Gemini created a summary that was a few sentences long as well as three bullet point “details.” For a work meeting where many decisions may have been made this simply isn’t sufficient to fully capture what was discussed. For a product manager, for example, this summary wouldn’t be enough to capture technical details and specific decisions. 

The transcript arrived accurately labeled with who was speaking, but contained numerous inaccuracies as well as misspelled words. The transcript even says at the end, “This editable transcript was computer generated and might contain errors. People can also change the text after it was created.”

2. Disjointed files

The next problem with Google Gemini’s “Take Notes for Me’ feature is a lack of centralization. Each asset created — the summary, the transcript, and the recording — are created as separate files within your Google Drive.

While the files do automatically link to each other, this is a disjointed approach. If there’s an important moment in the summary, you can’t simply click it to be taken to that portion of the transcript. Likewise, you can’t click the transcript to be taken to that timestamp in the video recording as you would with a tool like Fellow where everything is in one place

Using the files created by Gemini is frustrating because they simply don’t work together.

As well, these files are not automatically organized in any particular way — just placed in your Google Drive. You would have to manually organize your files if you wanted to have all your summaries, transcripts, and recordings in a particular folder. To loop someone else in, you’d also have to share three separate files to provide the complete context.

3. Only English is supported

At least for now, Google Gemini’s note-taking and transcription are only available for Google Meet calls conducted completely in English.

That simply won’t work for any organization that conducts business in any other language, especially those with international offices or clients.

4. Gemini can only be used with Google Meet

Being a Google product, Gemini’s note taker only works with Google Meet. While that may be enough for some organizations, anyone who uses Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or another video conferencing app is out of luck.

That’s also a limitation for calls with third parties, such as customers, agencies, or freelancers, as you may be using multiple video conferencing services in your workflow.

5. Gemini doesn’t offer other meeting productivity features

Just because a meeting has a summary, transcription, and recording doesn’t mean it was a productive meeting. While Google Gemini’s “Take Notes for Me” feature can provide documentation, it doesn’t do anything else to support your meeting workflow.

Gemini doesn’t, for example, allow you to create an integrated meeting agenda ahead of your calls. As well, you don’t receive a pre-meeting brief summarizing your last call with attendees and the post-meeting emails don’t have any details, just links to the prepared documents.

A comprehensive AI meeting assistant helps employees to better prepare and follow up on meetings, and Gemini doesn’t do that.

6. No integrations

Let’s say you’re a sales rep and you’ve just recorded a call with a prospect using Google Gemini. You have a transcript and summary, but how do you get that information into your CRM? The only answer is tedious, manual work.

The same is true if you’re an engineering lead and need to connect what was discussed in the meeting to issues on your Jira or Linear board. Again, the only way to do that is manually.

The items discussed in meetings don’t just stay in the meeting, they tie into your entire tech stack and your other productivity tools. An AI meeting assistant should make sure all those apps talk to each other, but Gemini doesn’t offer any integrations.

7. Gemini is only available on some Google Workspace plans

Finally, another significant factor of Gemini meeting notes is that they’re simply not available to everyone. According to Google, only Business Standard and Business Plus workspaces can use this feature. For context, Business Standard costs $12 per user per month, and Business Plus costs $18 per user per month.

If you’re already on one of these plans, then Gemini is now included. However, given the cost and other limitations listed here, it’s simply not worth getting a Google Workspace if what you really want is an AI meeting assistant.

Why you should choose Fellow over Google Gemini for meeting notes and transcriptions

Of all the AI meeting assistants available, Fellow is the one built from the ground up with high security and privacy standards as well as support before, during, and after meetings. Fellow also integrates with not only Google Meet, but also Zoom and Microsoft teams, as well as CRMs like HubSpot and Salesforce and project management tools like Linear and Jira. 

Fellow is our choice as the best alternative and upgrade to Google Gemini’s “Take Notes for Me” and here we’ll review the features that support our pick.

1. Industry-leading security and privacy

If privacy and security is something your organization cares about, Fellow is the clear choice when adopting an AI meeting assistant.

The meeting data Fellow collects is never used to train our LLM partners — period. You are also in full control of how long your data remains with Fellow and all of the data is encrypted. As well, Fellow uses SSO and multi-factor authentication and is SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR, and CCPA compliant.

Fellow users also maintain control over which meetings are recorded and summarized. Organizations can establish a rule set that determines, for example, that meetings labelled “legal” aren’t joined by our meeting bot. And, in any call, recording can be paused and restarted at any time with a click. 

Fellow’s recording and recap library is also built with customizable permissions options, so only the team members you want to will have access to any given meeting data.

You can read more about Fellow’s security and privacy protocols in our Trust center.

2. Redaction at the ready

If you have a meeting and accidentally forget to pause recording during a sensitive topic, what do you do? With Gemini, you can edit the transcript, but it will still appear in the document’s history. And the recording can’t be edited at all, only deleted.

With Fellow, users can retroactively redact portions of their meetings. With this feature, the selected passage is permanently deleted from the recording, transcript, and summary.

3. One central hub for recordings, transcripts, notes

Unlike having unorganized files scattered across your Google Drive, Fellow centralizes all your meeting data in one app, including recordings, transcripts, and meeting notes.

In Fellow, your recording, transcript, and notes are collected in a single, user-friendly interface, accessible through your organization’s recording library. 

Organizations can also create custom channels within this library. For example, you could create a channel just for Town Hall meetings that everyone can access, or a channel of Sales calls that’s only available to teams that need customer insights.

With Fellow, all your meeting information is easily accessible and right where you need it.

4. Extensive integrations

We know that your tech stack works best when apps can talk to each other, and Fellow can do just that.

Fellow integrates with more than 50 tools, including:

• Project management tools like Linear, ClickUp, and Jira
• Communication tools like Slack, Loom, and Confluence
• File sharing tools like Google Drive and Dropbox
• Service desks like Zendesk and Freshworks
• CRMs like Salesforce and HubSpot

Customer-facing teams like Sales and Customer Success will find the CRM integration especially useful. Fellow is able to pull data from Salesforce and HubSpot into our interface and then update both tools based on meeting data. Fellow even uses AI to make suggestions for HubSpot fields.

5. Works with more video conferencing apps

While Gemini’s note taker is limited to Google Meet calls, Fellow works with Google Meet, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams. No matter what app you use for calls — or if you use all three — Fellow can be there to record, take notes, and summarize using AI. And, no matter what video conferencing tool you use, all your recordings will be placed in one centralized library.

6. Pre- and post-meeting support

Fellow isn’t just an AI note taker, it’s an assistant for your entire meeting workflow.

Before a meeting, Fellow generates a collaborative AI meeting agenda that all attendees can contribute to ahead of time. Choose an agenda template from our library, or customize your own. A meeting agenda ensures that all meetings have a clear purpose and talking points, helping to ensure a productive use of time. Fellow also sends a pre-meeting brief for recurring meetings that summarizes the last call, reminding you what to follow up on.

During meetings, that agenda also acts as a place to take manual meeting notes or assign action items if you choose. Or, let Fellow take care of notes, including noting action items and decisions made.

After, Fellow adds your recording, AI transcript, and meeting notes to your recording library as well as sends a detailed post-meeting recap to attendees. 

Fellow can even help create good meeting habits with org-wide rules like no meeting days, a meeting cost calculator, and meeting analytics.

7. Multi-language support

While Google Gemini only supports English meetings, Fellow supports 90+ languages, including:

• Chinese

• Dutch
• English 
• French
• German
• Hindi
• Indonesian
• Italian
• Japanese
• Korean
• Portuguese
• Russian
• Spanish
• Swedish
• Turkish
• Ukrainian

8. Free plan, Solo plan, and low-cost plans

Finally, there’s a lower barrier to entry to use Fellow. 

Fellow’s always-free plan includes 5 AI meeting notes and 5 AI recordings per user, access to our Ask Fellow chatbot, and integrations with Google Meet, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams, and Slack.

Paid plans start at $7 per user per month for small teams. For larger organizations, the Business plan includes unlimited AI for $15 per month and Enterprise plans are $25 per user per month. If you’re a solopreneur, consultant, or coach, Fellow also offers a solo plan for $19 per month with unlimited AI.

Learn more about Fellow’s pricing plans.

Don’t settle for a basic tool — your meetings deserve the most accurate and secure AI meeting assistant 

Google Gemini’s “Take Notes for Me” feature does what it says — it can summarize, transcribe, and record your meetings. However, it simply cannot replace the comprehensive value of an AI meeting assistant like Fellow.

Think of it like this — you could manage a project using nothing but a spreadsheet. But, if you really care about operational efficiency, you’d use a purpose-built project management tool to track tickets. The same logic applies here. A purpose-built AI meeting assistant provides the most value for improving meeting etiquette and efficiency across your organization.

With best-in-class security, you can trust that meeting data shared with Fellow is in safe hands. You can also help employees build better meeting habits, all supported by one central, accessible hub.

Don’t limit yourself with a limited tool — Get started with Fellow today.