Google unveils new Workspace

Google Cloud has announced the launch of Google Workspace, bringing together messaging, meetings, docs, and tasks.

The new name, brand and user experience is designed to reimagine how people communicate and collaborate, the company says.

"This is the end of the 'office' as we know it," says 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. The new home for work is generally available to all Google Workspace business customers and, in the coming months, will also roll out to consumers.

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. 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 providing 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.

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 our education and nonprofit customers in the coming months. Education customers can continue to access our 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, and 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.