And there are also news for companies: new individual subscription mode, Google Meet improvements and new security and privacy features.
Google announces Google Workspace for anyone with a Google account . This means that from today over 3 billion users will be able to access the full Workspace experience, including Gmail, Chat, Calendar, Drive , Docs, Sheets, Meet and more. To enable the integrated experience in Google Workspace you can start by activating Google Chat in Gmail.
However, there are also other news for companies (whose full service obviously remains for a fee ), which Google briefly illustrates as follows:
- The evolution from Rooms (Virtual rooms) in Google Chat at Spaces, which will take place during the summer. Spaces will become Google's “Trello”, with threads aligned by topic, presence indicators, personalized user states, expressive reactions and disappearing views. Further details are available on the official blog.
- A new individual subscription mode, Google Workspace Individual, which offers premium features, including smart booking services, professional video meetings and personalized email marketing, and much more. Workspace Individual will soon be rolled out in six markets (US, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Brazil and Japan). If for some reason you are interested, you can subscribe to receive updates.
- New features of Google Meet in favor of a collaboration equity : companion mode on Google Meet, new RSVP options in Calendar, improvements to Meet hardware (from September), new controls to make meetings safer and more secure
- New security and privacy features in Google Workspace: client-side encryption, Trust rules for Drive, labels for Drive, more protections against phishing and malware
More information on the official Google blog; below a short video example of Workspace.
Note: the first version of the article said “free” in the title. This has caused some confusion for users and we apologize for it. Now Google Workspace is accessible to everyone and tools such as Chat, which this extension of the service is part of, are free. Obviously all the complete Workspace plans remain paid (here the prices).
