Yesterday, a random series of events drove Google and spilled the beans into a new project they planned to unveil in the coming weeks as part of their Cloud Next ’20 virtualized conference that’s currently underway. Probably slated for next week’s Productivity and Collaboration conversations, the slide platform for Google’s new collaboration effort leaked on Twitter and apparently without hesitation, Google just stood up and decided to make all of this much more official.
If you have ever been involved with a team in a professional or educational setting, You probably saw that video up there and you loved every second of it. It is also very likely that you have deeply related to these problems and problems on a very personal level. I know I did what I saw. If one thing is very clear on what Google is doing with this new integrated Gmail workspace, it is the fact that they have been listening carefully to what real people have problems in collaborative and digital environments.
The general underlying problem with other collaborative software that I have tried to test in office environments is the fact that Most people realize and understand the basic need to start the day by email. As much as we have tried to tame it and flee from that fact, it is still true. The vast majority of us live and die in our inbox when it comes to being productive at work, and most team-based collaborative tools don’t start there with you. Instead, they ask you to adopt new habits and ways of working to adapt to your systems. I know it works for some groups, but for all the computers I’ve been on, these kinds of settings have always failed because people go back to what they know. And what they know is email.
In what appears to be a stroke of brilliance, Google is finally releasing a true productivity solution that fits perfectly into emails, chats, documents, calls, video chats and tasks, but they are not introducing a whole new app or service to tie it all together. Instead, they are moving all of these pieces under the Gmail roof for G Suite users in the coming weeks. There is no need to install a new application, there is no need to adopt a new workflow or create new habits. Google is clearly seeing on the wall that people are, for better or for worse, linked to email at work. So why not take advantage of the core app that people are already using and build from there?
Just as Microsoft is flexing its dominance in Office products for people to join Teams, Google is now flexing its strength in the email space with Gmail to entice users to adopt their collaboration tools in a way much more unified and synchronized. Emails will move seamlessly in and out of chats, Google Docs will be accessible and editable, calendar events or video chats can be scheduled, while task lists can be made and deleted without leaving the Gmail tab. Yes, I said tab, as in singular tab. This entire toolbox will be available both in the Gmail application and in the Gmail web application through the browser.
Google hopes that all of this will start rolling out for G Suite users in the coming weeks and I can tell you that we will make the most of this here in Chrome Unboxed. I even got in touch with the marketing company we used to work with to alert them to this new tool also from the moment I saw the video. I think anyone who uses Google products to get the job done should be sitting down and taking note of what Google has prepared here. It could be one of the biggest and most important changes to Gmail we’ve seen across the board.
The right tool at the right time
At a time when work must continue, regardless of our inability to physically meet, teams need more tools to stay in touch and get the job done in the most productive way possible. Obviously, we have not yet used this new evolution of Google Gmail, but I can already see where this set of services could win against other competitors. Getting started with Gmail first is a stroke of genius and the fact that this new setting will allow users to move between email, internal chats, tasks, collaborative document and file editing without leaving a single tab on their desktop is mind-boggling to say less .
There’s a slide at the end of the preview video that just says: “It is very useful to have it all together. This is what we have been asking for. “ And I would 100% agree with that. While in the workforce and dealing with any type of equipment in digital format, I was frustrated by the inability to find the right tool that would not only work, but would encourage the entire team to participate. too. I think Google took a step back, heard the frustration, and solved a problem in the most Google way possible. I think this new Gmail for teams could end up being one of their most important software updates in a long time, and I can’t wait to start using it.
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