Google announces Workspace updates, including spaces for collaboration, Meet calling within Gmail, and 27" and 65" video calling devices by Logitech and Avocor
A new GamesBeat event is Google today announced a series of updates across Workspace, its collection of cloud computing … Source: Google Cloud Blog .
VentureBeatKyle Wiggers
Context & Ripple Effects
Google was already broadening Workspace beyond documents: its earlier Focus Time and secondary-display Meet features addressed meeting management and hybrid setups, while the subsequent “smart canvas” push tied Docs more closely to Meet. The new collaboration spaces, in-mail calling, and dedicated room hardware extend that effort across messaging, meetings, and physical meeting rooms.
Later coverage shows Google building on this base through third-party Workspace integrations and Chat and Meet APIs, then adding Gemini features to Gmail, Chat, Meet, Docs, and Sheets. That progression makes the 2021 release an early step in making Workspace a more connected work surface.
First-order effects
Workspace users can move more of their messaging and calling activity through Google’s own Gmail, Meet, and collaboration tools rather than treating them as separate destinations.
Logitech and Avocor gain named Meet hardware offerings at 27 and 65 inches, giving Google’s meeting service endpoints for individual desks and shared rooms.
Second-order effects
Google’s tighter Gmail-to-Meet path and collaboration spaces raise the value of later Chat and Meet integrations and APIs for third-party services, because they connect to a more central workplace workflow.
Organizations standardizing on Workspace can evaluate collaboration software and meeting-room displays as one deployment, linking Google’s software choices to Logitech’s and Avocor’s hardware sales opportunities.
Third-order effects
Google’s later expansion from connected collaboration features into Gemini across Workspace suggests a longer shift toward a consolidated work surface where communication, documents, meetings, integrations, and assistance are embedded in the same suite.
If enterprises continue to buy meeting workflows alongside room hardware, collaboration platforms will compete not only on applications but on the depth of their device and partner ecosystems.
The trend: Workplace suites are consolidating messaging, meetings, documents, hardware, integrations, and AI assistance into increasingly unified work surfaces.
It really is remarkable how ruthless Google has been when it comes to leveraging Gmail's popularity to launch or re-launch its other comms products. As a result, Gmail isn't an email app anymore. It's a Google communications app now. https://www.theverge.com/...
Funny thing: the original versions of Google Inbox was supposed to do this. We built it for much more than comms too. But leadership asked us to stick to mail. So it was scaled back. There were several differences in the approach that I still think makes this more compelling http…
Quick take: Gmail launched as a communications app in 2004 and it's still a communications app today in 2021. It's just a BLOATED communications app. https://twitter.com/...
Google's messaging mess is what happens when you confuse tactics with strategy. Simply shipping a feature doesn't matter if it doesn't work coherently with the rest of the user's workflow especially when that workflow is other Google products. 🤦 https://twitter.com/...
They should have done this years ago and skipped Duo, Hangouts etc etc etc. Gmail app takes calls now, too, because Google wants it to do everything https://t.co/j0YN8RwRxT
Since Meet was already in Gmail and since constant meetings have broken our brains, I've seen some confusion on what calls in gmail means. What's new is people it can actually RING your phone via gmail. Like ring ring ring ring banana phone kind of ring. https://t.co/nm2BUwtovr h…
“Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.”—Zawinski's Law of Software Envelopment In this case, Gmail proves the rule by its inverse. https://twitter.com/...
Gmail is to Google Workspace what Teams is to Microsoft365 - you find your cornerstone and build off that! The tricky part is not overwhelming users by making a product too comprehensive https://twitter.com/...