Google is rolling out upgraded features and an improved experience to some of its biggest web apps—including Gmail and Google Docs—while at the same time also transforming the apps that consumers use for instant messaging.
You may have seen mentions of Google Chat and Google Workspace, and wondered exactly what was going on, and that’s what we’re here to explain. In short, everyone’s Google experience is getting an overhaul, and you can start trying it now.
Google being Google, the changes aren’t all that easy to understand, but the best place to start is with the new (but also old) instant messaging app: Google Chat.
A Brief History of Google’s Messaging Apps
We’re not going to go all the way back to the beginning here, but a little history will help you understand why these apps are changing. In many ways the messaging platforms are key to the upgrades Google is planning for this year and beyond.
You’re probably most familiar with Google Hangouts if you use a Google app to send instant messages to friends and family—it’s Hangouts that up until very recently has been sitting in the corner of Gmail on the web. Hangouts is also available on the web as a separate app, and on mobile platforms.
At one point it seemed as though Hangouts would end up being Google’s all-encompassing messaging app for everything (it even supported SMS at one stage.) In 2017, four years after Hangouts launched, Google introduced Hangouts Chat (for text) and Hangouts Meet (for video calls): business-focused spin-offs of Hangouts for paying users of G Suite, formerly known as Google Apps.
G Suite is another product you need to know about—it’s now called Google Workspace, and it’s all the tools that everyone gets for free (Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, and so on) wrapped up with some extras for businesses and teams—extras like managing web domains and contact databases. This is a paid-for collection of apps, and it might well be what your current employer uses.
Originally born out of Hangouts, Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet have now been rebranded as Google Chat and Google Meet, and are coming full circle to replace Hangouts for consumers as well as companies. If you think this sounds confusing, welcome to Google’s messaging app strategy over the last few years.
Google Chat and Google Meet do offer a few upgrades over Hangouts. Google Chat is more like Slack or Microsoft Teams than iMessage or WhatsApp, offering easy access to features such as file sharing and chatting in groups, while Google Meet is a comprehensive video calling application in the Zoom mold. There are rumors that Google Meet will eventually edge out Google Duo, Google’s other video calling app, though that hasn’t happened yet.