* Be notified when packages are coming via "e mail"
* Send your own "e mail" to other people
* Organize events by date in a "calendar"
* Write an episode of Stranger Things in a "document", or if you don't happen to own the Stranger Things franchise, write about your viewing experience
* Write down a list of band names
* Sum the number of times a given child poops in a day in a "spreadsheet"
* Take part in a "meet", which is a sort of phone call but with video
I hope that clears it up.
I’m still puzzled at what’s new and what’s different from what people with (free and paid) Google accounts have.
In many ways, the market has matured enough that Old Google isn't viable. Shareholders care about P&L and Google's one major innovation, "ads that work," is industry standard now. Old Google worked because ads made so much money that it drowned out everything else and gave people a lot of freedom to do crazy things.
Wall Street wants the numbers.
https://youtu.be/ICp2-EUKQAI?t=199
Wow, Google literally demos almost exactly that:
Also Google's spreadsheet program is dogballs compared to excel.
Basically, Workspaces is failing so they're trying to open it to a wider audience in the hopes that it won't fail. It'll probably be abandoned by October and shutdown in a year or two.
Because if the answer is no, it's going to the graveyard no matter how many users it has. (https://killedbygoogle.com/)
Which means, practically, that everything is done through internal mail lists, because chat is not usable.
Pre-covid, that also strongly incentivized everyone to actually work on campus.
Edit: Disc: Googler.
I think they've gone beyond making it unusable, I literally don't know how I'd find it if I wanted to, and they've long since convinced me that I shouldn't try.
FWIW, chat.google.com wasn't rolled out for @gmail.com accounts. It was being rolled out in Google Workspace/gSuite. And this announcement rolled it out to @gmail.com accounts. Old Hangouts is replaced by Chat for text and Meet for video. You can access it at chat.google.com.
Voice is for texting with your GVoice number. It used to be possible to integrate with Hangouts but it's not integrated with Chat. Chat just works with gmail/Workspace account and not a phone number. Voice works with a phone number.
0: https://workspace.google.com/terms/sla.html#:~:text=rate-,go...
1: https://support.google.com/a/table/7539891?hl=en (and this is just the public list).
If you open Word or Excel directly, does the main page show you a list of appropriate documents to open? I have found the amount of times where the workflow requires navigating to a document through teams first to be extremely minimal. If the document isnt on the list, typing a couple characters into the Word/Excel search bar does the trick.
There is a "shared with me" submenu on the main screen of Word / Excel. Things shared with you should show up.
If it got dragged into chat, do you have the option to right click or three dot click and open in desktop app?
In my experience, you never have to open it in the webapp before opening it in the desktop app, if you ask to open in the desktop app or open the desktop app first and then open the file.
Like you, I can't fucking stand it, and I make the same mistake at least once a day.
Disclaimer: I work at msft etc etc.
Obviously, other systems process the contents of your email, eg spam filter, the frontend displaying the email to you, and I assume the government can get access through legal warrants (the ethics of the secrecy of such actions is a different debate - Google is required to follow the law).
1. a switchover to Chat (apparently some hybrid slack/discord/I can't figure out)
2. serious plans to compete with microsoft office via more enterprise capabilities
3. availability of (previously) paid gsuite-only features to individuals for $10/mo
all bundled together in a mash
I feel that they have neat product ideas, but organizationally maybe the are oriented around engineering lines, so product might lack focus, and product marketing is an afterthought.
Remember Google+ ? Nobody knew what it was.
Remember Wave? Nobody really knew what it did.
How does the biggest company on earth fail to understand how to communicate basic things?
This product page has way too much text, and not nearly enough 'what it is' 'what it can do' and especially 'why'.
As such, it's hard to get the word out organically.
Information spreads like a virus, you want a high R0 which comes with clarity, consistency and authenticity.
'Company A strategy vs. Company B' is not something 'people' think or know about.
That's something for people in the industry to think about.
Ask your mother or father who work in Real Estate and Healthcare what 'Google+' is (back in the day) and they wouldn't really know.
And nobody knew what Wave was. I used it and couldn't understand it, other than it was a means to communicate with other people. Colossal product marketing, usability and communications failure.
You'd have to ask your Circles.
Not a lot better, but still better. There's a gif of basically integrated workflow between email, chat and document editing... I think.