“This is the end of the ‘office’ as we know it,” said Javier Soltero, Vice President and General Manager of Google Workspace. “From here on out, teams need to thrive without meeting in person, protect their time to focus on the most impactful work and build human connection in new ways. Google Workspace gives people a familiar, fully integrated user experience that helps everyone succeed in this new reality – whether you’re in an office, working from home, on the frontlines, or engaging with customers.” 

Google has spent decades building products that are simple and easy to learn and that anticipate users’ needs in a helpful way. More than 2.6 billion consumer, enterprise, and education users now actively choose to use Google’s productivity and collaboration apps every month.

In July, Google announced a better home for work, the first step in its vision for a single, unified experience that provides the best way to create, communicate, and collaborate. Today, this new home for work is generally available to all Google Workspace business customers and, in the coming months, will also roll out to consumers.

“Google’s collaboration and communication products fuel productivity and connect our teams in ways that were not possible before,” said Alex Grigorian, SVP & CIO, Corporate Services, Equifax. “We’re excited to be a part of the evolution of Google Workspace and explore the next chapter of building a culture that inspires innovation.”

Creating a new user experience

The Google Workspace user experience thoughtfully brings together core tools for communication and collaboration—like chat, email, voice and video calling, and content management—into a single, unified experience. The new features include:

• Linked previews: Available today, linked previews in Docs, Sheets, and Slides allow users to preview the content of a link without leaving the original document, saving time switching between apps and tabs and allowing more time to get work done.
• Smart chips in Docs, Sheets, and Slides: Beginning to roll out today, when you @mention someone in a document, a popup will display details, provide context, and even suggest actions like sharing the document. By connecting users to relevant content and people right in Docs, Sheets, and Slides, Google Workspace helps users get more done from where they already are.
• Doc creation in rooms: In the coming weeks, Google Workspace will enable users to dynamically create and collaborate on a document (Docs, Sheets, Slides) within a room in Chat, without ever having to switch tabs or tools. This will reduce complexity and help ensure all team members have visibility into relevant project work.
• Meet picture-in-picture across Docs, Sheets and Slides: Back in July, Google announced it’s bringing Meet picture-in-picture to Gmail and Chat, so users can see and hear the people they’re working with while collaborating. In the coming months, Google will roll out Meet picture-in-picture to Docs, Sheets, and Slides, meaning users will get the benefit of those nonverbal cues that come with actually seeing someone’s face when collaborating in real time.

“It’s not just businesses facing the need to transform; employees are in a period of transition themselves as they adjust to an increasingly hybrid way of working, and technology plays a critical role in enabling this,” said Angela Ashenden, Principal Analyst for Workplace Transformation at CCS Insight. “Google’s consumer heritage and cloud-native products make it uniquely positioned to guide users through the evolving workplace environment. Users are overwhelmed by the number of tools and channels available, and Google is helping them access these disparate workstreams in one place.” 

New brand identity

The new Google Workspace brand reflects Google’s product vision for a flexible, helpful, and simple experience with integration and collaboration at its core. In the coming weeks, users will see new four-color icons for Gmail, Drive, Calendar, Meet, and our collaborative content creation tools like Docs, Sheets, and Slides, that resemble the same family and represent Google Workspace’s commitment to building immersive communication and collaboration experiences, all with helpfulness from Google.

Google is also bringing Google Workspace to their education and nonprofit customers in the coming months. Education customers can continue to access their tools via G Suite for Education, which includes Classroom, Assignments, Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Meet. G Suite for Nonprofits will continue to be available to eligible organizations through the Google for Nonprofits program.

Giving businesses more choices

All of the more than 6 million paying Google Workspace business customers, from SMBs to multinational corporations, share a need for secure, transformative solutions that help them modernize how they work, but their storage, management, security, and compliance needs vary greatly. To provide more choice and help customers get the most out of Google Workspace, and based on their direct feedback, Google is launching a new set of offerings that better align with how customers purchase its portfolio of products.