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What do you think about this one 👇? "A better home for work in G Suite"
I'm really excited about this one.
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I think this is a nice little add-on that will make a big difference to those who use Gsuite for both email and chat, and go mostly unnoticed/unutilized by those who don't really use the chat portion of the tool.
On a related note, Google Calendar just rolled out an update that (finally) allows you to dock a new event window to the left sidebar while it's being created - no longer does the window cover a portion of your calendar behind it.
Just click the 2 " = " above the event creation window to pin it.
Since I don't use Gmail's mobile apps, the changes don't affect me much—but if I did use them, I'm not sure I'd be a fan of the new design. It seems a good move for people who use Google Meet and Hangouts actively. For people (like myself) who use G Suite Gmail for email, Slack for chat, and Zoom for video calls, the new design adds clutter and features that I wouldn't use.
Also it's an interesting move to unify everything, when so many other apps keep splitting things out (Facebook splitting Messenger into a separate app, for a consumer app example). Though Microsoft is doing something similar on mobile with a new Office app instead of separate Word/Excel/PowerPoint apps, and you could imagine the possibility of taking that further merging Teams in as well.
If you're all-in on G Suite for everything, though, this is an interesting move. In some ways it's like a rethinking of what Google Wave tried to do in combining email and chat and document editing, though this time just by pulling multiple apps together instead of reinventing email itself.
I also see this unification as a trend like @NateNotes and think it's a smart move from Google.
Over the last decade there was such a boom of productivity tools across different verticals (video conferencing, chat, email, to-do lists and notes taking, etc) and today a typical company will be jumping between Gmail, Slack, Zoom or Notion several times a day.
I've always found crazy that companies already paying for G Suite would pay extra for video, chat and tasks apps that are already included in their G Suite subscription. I understand Google is not the best on everything but I struggle to see the marginal advantages of those other apps being worth the extra cost and the crazy amount of context switching that can kill up to 40% of users' productivity (according to Google itself).
Emerging products like ClickUp, Swit or Spike are blending email, chat and workflows very nicely, and I see the World taking this direction. With the nw 'Home for Work', I think Google is raising the barrier for the 6 million companies in G Suite to keep spreading their work across different tools and stay in one place. Not sure if it's going to work, but I think it's smart.
You’ve got a great point—if anything, with subscriptions traditional Office suites look like an increasingly good deal compared to paying for a dozen individual products. Though if a product is better for your core work, it can still make sense to pay for something extra. My team originally started using Zoom when we had Hangouts calls freeze just often enough to interrupt meetings, and nearly never had that with Zoom—thus making the change worthwhile.
But yeah, the more you combine products, the more attractive suite offerings look. Even if they’re not the absolute best in breed product individually, they may be better as a whole.
I definitely see this as a trend going forward. Unifying systems together seamlessly is a big reason why I have stuck to using Notion for the past few years. I don't know how well Google will do with it, but I do see it as a step in the right direction.
Yup: Notion's not quite as good at notes as a dedicated writing app, not quite as good at databases as Airtable, but altogether is a better app by pulling everything together in one place. Interesting new take on the office suite bundle, that's for sure.
Would be interesting if Notion ever added chat. Quip, another app in a similar space, has it, though I never ended up using it much when my team used Quip.
Looking for a better way to plan remote meetings across time zones, and keep up with events. What software is doing that best today?
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Good point on going unnoticed by those who don't need it—Facebook has so many random features that hang out in the menu, and I literally never see them. You almost become blind to buttons after a while.
Thanks for the Google Calendar tip—that'll be super handy!