The company will now offer its collaboration suite to consumers for free as it rolls out a variety of enhancements to better connect its productivity apps.
Since the rebranding of G Suite to Workspace last year, Google has targeted a more streamlined and interconnected experience across its collaboration and productivity apps to compete with the likes of Slack and Microsoft. On Monday, Google announced a host of updates aimed at that goal, including enhancements to its Chat and Meet apps, security features, and the introduction of „Spaces.“ The latter — Spaces — replaces Chat Rooms, an area in Workspace Chat “for people, projects and topics to come together, with a real-time collaboration canvas,” Sanaz Ahari, senior director of product management for Google Workspace, said in a briefing last week. The core functionality will be the same as Rooms: groups of workers can access and co-edit documents while simultaneously discussing changes in Chat, as well as share files, assign tasks, and organize work projects. However, Spaces will also include new features such as the ability to pin an important message within a workspace, search content, set custom statuses and presence indicators, and use in-line conversation threading. Spaces will also be more prominently shown in the left-hand navigation bar in Workspace, where it will sit alongside Mail, Chat, and Meet shortcut icons.
