Gmail upgrades Chat and Rooms
Many of the billions of Gmail users can now switch over to Google’s more modern system for Gmail, Docs, and Chat. As a result, all of them can more quickly be integrated into a single tab in the company’s new “smart canvas” push, which is also designed to interlink its various apps via “smart chips”.
Google also announced the “evolution of Rooms in Google Chat to Spaces”. Google wants to separate them into their top-level form of communication next to Gmail, Chat, and Meet. New features include improved message threading, emoji reactions, user roles, moderation tools, and “discoverable” spaces. As one reviewer said, “It seems that Spaces wants to serve both as a Slack competitor and as a competitor for public Discord groups and, well, maybe as an optional replacement for e-mail groups.”
According to Sanaz Ahari, senior director of product, the intention is for users to switch quickly between “modalities” of communication. “If you start something with an e-mail and then you want to upgrade it into more real-time interaction between a group — or even for a project — you’re able to do that and you can keep the context. Then you can all seamlessly upgrade into a meeting at the same time,” says Ahari.
Enterprise users will be able to use their own client-side encryption for data, add more “trust rules” for various Drive files to simplify access and permissions, and label files based on their sensitivity.