G Suite is Now Google Workspace Because 'Work is No Longer a Physical Place'

Google today announced that G Suite is being rebranded as Google Workspace. In another nod to the Google brand, four-color icons are coming to the Workspace productivity apps: Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Meet. From a report: Workspace is also getting new features, like linked previews, smart chips, Doc creation in rooms, and Meet picture-in-picture. Oh, and there are new pricing tiers, so you can't say it's just a rebrand. In July, Google started integrating Chat, Meet, Docs, and the rest into Gmail. Along with the new name, that integrated experience is now generally available to all paying Workspace customers. Google is promising to bring Workspace to education, nonprofit customers, and consumers "in the coming months." "Work is no longer a physical place that we go to, necessarily," Google Workspace VP Javier Soltero said yesterday in a press briefing. "Even though we've had mobile technology in the past, and people have been able to do some work on the go. The idea that we're able to build and run organizations, governments, financial institutions, any size of business, and do it in a way that doesn't require a physical presence that was previously referred to as an office will stay with us. Not because we will never return to offices, but because I think it's important to note that work will take place everywhere in between and that those offices will take on a different role."

Google Prison Workspace

[OffTheLip]

You are always able to work, 24x7.

Re:

[DontBeAMoran]

And soon they will demand that you work 25x8.

Prison rates

[Joe_Dragon]

20 min video visitation $12.99
Email $0.59 per page / message
Photo $0.59 per pic
Voice call $0.12-$0.49 per min
2.5% fee to add funds to account.

Branding strategies

[ZiggyZiggyZig]

Well ,they're better at branding than the guys at Microsoft Bing, for sure.

Still, they missed a wonderful opportunity to rebrand it "G Spot"...

Copycat strategy

[Roger W Moore]

Well ,they're better at branding than the guys at Microsoft Bing, for sure.

True but they are copying the strategy of the guys at Microsoft Office. Let's just hope they stop here and don't add a talking paperclip.

Re:

[neaorin]

Still, they missed a wonderful opportunity to rebrand it "G Spot"...

But then nerds wouldn't be able to find it anymore...

Re:

[rtb61]

There is the flip side, they are telling you exactly whose workspace that is and it ain't yours, it's theirs, they own your workspace and everything in idea, 'ALL YOUR IDEAS BELONG TO US'. It's google it's a whole lot less of a joke than it should be, seriously. Don't trust them, you should not.

Google, are you trying to be Oracle?

[Somervillain]

Google, why do you keep introducing pointless changes? It's been ages since you've released something new I found exciting. Now gmail is bloated and takes several seconds to load on a top of the line macbook with the best GPU. You killed Google Music, a great product, for YouTube Music, which doesn't even support keyboard shortcuts, like the old version. Why? I have no f-ing clue...I don't know anyone who does. No one knows which is your recommended chat/call framework these days.

Are you trying to be Oracle? I usually associate this level of ineptness with them. Why do you hate your users so much? How about you play nice with all your existing products. We don't want to switch services or deal with pointless renames or hideous bloat. I pay you money, monthly, for your service...make it nicer, please! Give us a smooth experience and make us glad to give you our money for monthly fees and the massive amount of ad money you make on top of that.

You really seem to hate your users.

Re:

[darkmeridian]

I'm so fucking annoyed that Google does dumb things like introduce twenty chat clients but randomly kills off Hangouts.

Re:

[DontBeAMoran]

When a company can't innovate anymore, they change their logos, re-brand existing products, introduce pointless GUI changes, lower the quality, increase prices, etc.

Re:

[Radical Moderate]

This. Spending a ton of money just to confuse your customers is a good indication that you're out of ideas.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

First and foremost they're an advertising company, not a software company. There is little impetus to provide a quality software product even under a subscription model. It is solely to gain mindshare and keep people hooked into their main revenue driver, advertising.

Said another way, regardless of the subscription aspect, they produce software as part of their business model to display ads from their advertising customers to people who use their products. As long as it's good enough to meet that goal an

How does this deserve downvoting?

[demon driver]

It's completely to the point.

Google just doesn't care about their users and they don't need to, that's not where their money comes from, or even would come from were there some fees to be paid.

Even ad-based services need to please user

[Somervillain]

First and foremost they're an advertising company, not a software company. There is little impetus to provide a quality software product even under a subscription model. It is solely to gain mindshare and keep people hooked into their main revenue driver, advertising.

But they want me to enjoy the experience and spend more time there and see more ads. I used to like Facebook and visit regularly. I HATE facebook now and rarely visit. Facebook is losing money on me because they provide a terrible experience. o I hate gmail's web interface and use an e-mail client 90% of the time, so they're losing ad revenue there.

Much like Oracle's many missteps, they're throwing money away. I'd understand if they made more money by annoying us, but they don't. It's just disgustin

Meaningless Marketing

[DarkRookie2]

If this was somehow going to get me to use the product, it failed big time.
I don't see the appeal for paying for slow poorly designed software with way too many extraneous features when there is better free(-ish) options out there.

Re:

[Killall -9 Bash]

It's a keyword cashgrab.

"We need to implement virtual workspaces for our remote users" CIO says.

Clueless IT monkey then types "workspaces" into google, and what do you suppose he finds?

Really?

[nospam007]

'Work is No Longer a Physical Place'

Tell that to my car mechanic, he flatly refuses to come fix my car at my home.
He won't fix them at his home either.

Re:

[neaorin]

And I'm sure your mechanic will complain about this the next time he logs onto G Suite.
Sorry, I meant Google Workspaces.

Truth or hypocrisy?

[robi5]

"Work is No Longer a Physical Place" - does it mean that Google now hires for distributed roles, rather than just in a handful of cities where they have an office? Or they don't dogfood this progressive thought?

Work is no longer the domain of the physical realm

[PingSpike]

Unless you're a contractor whose job it is to review youtube videos. That shit has to be done on site right where the yous come out of the tube.

They want to get rid of the UNLIMITED

[itsme1234]

This is not a simple rebranding, they are trying to get rid of the "unlimited" subscriptions where people are paying peanuts to store 50-200+TBs (or sometimes even over 1000TBs, yes you read that right).

It's a VERY hot topic at https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/j61wcg/g_suite_becomes_google_workspace_12month/ [reddit.com]

Re:

[jtalle]

Maybe that's the true reason they changed it? Taking away the pun bait?

Good grief, ANOTHER rebrand

[93 Escort Wagon]

Google’s getting to be as bad as Microsoft when it comes to making frequent name changes for no particularly compelling reason.

Oh I thought...

[codeButcher]

And here I thought they changed it because "suit" is not pinstripes and a tie anymore.

Although, to be clear, "work" is not the only thing I do in my birthday suit either.