Google brings all of its messaging and communication apps under a single team to be led by Javier Soltero, who is VP and GM of G Suite
Integration isn't on the roadmap, but coherency may be — In October of last year, Google hired Javier Soltero to be the VP and GM of G Suite …
The VergeDieter Bohn
Context & Ripple Effects
Six months after Googlehired Javier Soltero from Microsoft to run G Suite, the company has widened his remit to cover every messaging and communication app in its portfolio — Gmail, Meet, Hangouts Chat and the rest now report to one team. The timing matters: in January, reporting surfaced that Google was testing a unified business communications app drawing on Gmail, Drive, Meet, and Chat, and a single owner is the organizational prerequisite for that kind of cross-app product.
Soltero's own history frames the move — he built Acompli into Microsoft's Outlook mobile play and later ran Office product groups, so Google is importing the person who ran a rival's integrated productivity suite to do the same internally. The description is explicit that app integration is not on the roadmap; the goal is coherency, not merger.
First-order effects
Google's messaging and communication apps now share one roadmap owner in Soltero, ending the era where Meet, Chat, and Gmail's communication features were planned by separate teams.
Soltero's G Suite role expands from office productivity into real-time communications, making him one of Google's most senior product executives across the collaboration stack.
Second-order effects
The unified team sets up the structural change that followed: Google's October 2020 rebrand of G Suite as Google Workspace, which integrated Meet, Chat, and Rooms across all suite apps — the coherency mandate made visible.
The experiment reported in January — a business app combining Gmail, Drive, Meet, and Chat functions — now has an executive whose portfolio matches its scope, giving it a natural home rather than competing with the existing apps' owners.
Third-order effects
Google's productivity business is reorganizing around a single collaboration surface rather than a collection of apps, mirroring the integrated-suite model Soltero built at Microsoft — a competitive response to how enterprise buyers now purchase collaboration as one product, not point tools.
The consolidation also concentrates execution risk in one leader: when Soltero left Google in 2022, the entire productivity and communications portfolio changed hands at once, showing how org design converts into succession exposure.
The trend: Cloud productivity suites are consolidating messaging, video, and office apps under single owners, with Google's Workspace rebrand and Microsoft's integrated Office model converging on the same one-suite structure.
I think every one not inside would want the return of GTalk - in some form. Google needs to go back to the light, simple apps. just make one. Especially for mainstream customers. https://twitter.com/...
I can't wait until there's one service that links to Google Messages, Google Chat, Stadia, Gmail, and whatever else. Like seriously, just make a chat box for Google Chat in every service and link them with an account. Simple and easy solution. https://twitter.com/...
Someone at Google realized they have more than ten chat apps doing the same thing Also, someone realized that Google Wave was Slack before Slack and they missed a big opportunity. https://twitter.com/...
seems like lack of communication between various communications tools team has led to a communication that all communications will now be consolidated under 1 person. https://twitter.com/...
What if googles messaging app strategy is a 4D-level chess game to constantly have news about its chat apps to make sure there are no news about other competing chat apps? https://twitter.com/...
Google is moving all of its communications apps under a single boss. That doesn't mean everything will be fixed tomorrow (or integrated ever), but it should mean more coherency going forward. Details: https://www.theverge.com/... https://twitter.com/...