I think in most VC software (including Meet) there is a threshold you have to be above, or it's considered just background noise, and not transmitted.
In Discord, you can actually view your audio in reference to the threshold, which helps get that setting set appropriately for the hardware you have. No such luck for the "real" VC apps though.
I've done a fair amount of audio engineering, and my perception today of Meet was that it wasn't the simple threshold / noise gate that I would expect. For instance, I could see her moving her lips and putting down dishes, which I'm sure were noisy, but until she spoke loudly enough for a recognizable voice to overcome the dish sounds, she was essentially muted by the app. I think it was being gated based on vocal range or actual identifiable speech, not just volume. That was what seemed new to me.
In Discord, you can actually view your audio in reference to the threshold, which helps get that setting set appropriately for the hardware you have. No such luck for the "real" VC apps though.