Google is also doing its portion through Workspace to encourage collaborative activities in organizations, including those that are also adopting the increasingly popular hybrid work model, as people return to their usual routines after the holiday season.
Google Workspace launches its equivalent to Slack
In this regard, as previously acknowledged, Google has now fulfilled its pledge by launching the Spaces feature for all Workspace users, which will become the “primary location for team collaboration.”
Organizations will be able to use Spaces to further develop their projects and ideas in real-time and asynchronously, rather than via email threads and video call sessions, with integration with the core Workspace applications such as Calendar, Drive, Documents, Spreadsheets, Presentations.
The Spaces feature comes to be Google’s equivalent of Slack for digital collaboration and productivity for businesses and organizations of all sizes.
For the time being, Spaces is replacing Rooms in Gmail and Chat apps beginning today, bringing new capabilities, with additional features like an interface that helps you to locate spaces to join and participate, improved search functionality, branching conversations, and improved management and security options arriving in the coming months.
The ability to start Google Meet video and audio calls straight from the Gmail and Chat mobile apps, for the time being, will soon be accessible, allowing one-on-one talks without having to leave the Gmail app.
The goal is to gradually extend Meet’s calling features to other aspects of Workspace, as well as people cards, from chat conversations and even within Spaces.
Google has also introduced a number of new Workspace features, including officially unveiling new Google Meet certified devices that will join the ecosystem of supported devices, such as two all-in-one devices for video conferencing.
The idea is that the new features will initially reach Google Workspace business accounts so that they can later also be made available to home user accounts, as has become standard for Google.