Google recently announced that it was integrating its Meet video conferencing service with the Gmail application, a move that was met with some criticism As a result, the introduction of the Meet tab was just the beginning of a transformation. Developer Tahin Rahman found slides from Google’s upcoming Cloud Next ’20 event showing how the company is looking to turn the Gmail app and website into a single productivity hub, with Meet, Chat, Docs, and Rooms built into the service. .

For Gmail Mobile, redesign means introducing lower tabs that allow you to switch between four sections: Mail, Chat, Rooms and Meet. All this is self explanatory if you know Google services. Mail is the usual email section, chat allows you to have instant messaging conversations with coworkers, Rooms is a group chat experience similar to Slack, and Meet gives you access to video conferencing. In Chat and Rooms, Gmail will also send you follow-up reminders if your people don’t respond in time, just like the nudges you receive in Mail.

These same sections will also enter the Gmail web application, although they will be located in the sidebar, where the contents of each section will be instantly visible and accessible. Other screenshots show that you can collaborate on documents directly in Gmail, giving you access to chats, video conferences and Google Docs, all in the same web application; This could increase productivity, but it could also get messy pretty quickly on smaller screens.

It is unclear whether this tight integration with Google’s productivity tools will reach the consumer version of Gmail, as these features are clearly targeted at organizations. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see at least some of these coming, after all, Google Meet already lives in the inboxes of regular Gmail users. Fortunately, the new features won’t make Gmail even more memory on the desktop, but that’s almost inevitable. Maybe we can disable unnecessary modules, which is already possible for Meet in the Gmail app.