A report from The Information (subscription required) claims that Google is working on yet another messaging app. The team from GSuite is cooking up a mobile app that 'brings together the functions of several standalone apps the company already offers' into a unifying platform. Google reportedly envisions this as an enterprise communications app along the same lines as Slack or Microsoft Teams. It sounds like the same sales pitch given for the 'Google Hangouts Chat' service that was developed for GSuite in 2018, but when Google messaging services come and go like the seasons of the year, you can't expect every single one to have a unique premise.
Google Slack Competitor
According to the report, this 'new unified communications app' will merge functions from Gmail, Drive, Hangouts Chat, and Hangouts Meet. Slack already lets you send messages, share files, and do video chats, which covers most of these apps. Pulling in features from Gmail, though, like the last email you sent the person you're messaging, would be unique and genuinely useful. One alarming thing about the report is that it refers to this service as a 'mobile app' and doesn't mention anything about a Web or desktop app, which is how many employees primarily use Slack.News that the app will pull in Hangouts Chat features makes us wonder what will happen to the actual Hangouts Chat service. One of the current plans in the Google messaging mess is to merge Google's biggest consumer chat platform, Hangouts, with Hangouts Chat, its current enterprise chat platform (despite the similar names, the two apps are unrelated). If Hangouts Chat is merging into something else, does that mean the plan to migrate consumer Hangouts over isn't happening?
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Google Slack Extension
If this service launches, it would be Google's tenth messaging app, after (say it with me!) Google Talk, Google Voice, Google Buzz, Google+ Messenger, Hangouts, Spaces, Allo, Hangouts Chat, and Google Messages. Google's inability to stick with a single messaging platform and its penchant for shutting down services has left its users very suspicious of any new messaging app from the company. It's hard to know what messaging apps are sticking around and which ones are flashes in the pan that will be gone in a year. Messaging apps rely on the network effects of an established user base to be useful, and when the company is constantly shutting down existing services and spinning up new ones, it's hard to establish any user base.Google Slack Download
Google's I/O conference tends to be a big vacuum for all of these announcements, so maybe we'll learn more at the show in May.
Google Slack Alternative
Google Drive for Slack If you use Google Drive, you can install the Google Drive app to share and access files right from your workspace. Read on to learn how to set up the Google Drive app and create and share files. Note: Files added from the Google Drive app can be searched in Slack, but they won’t be stored in your workspace. 2 days ago Slack is a multi-platform cloud-based team messaging application and platform. It is capable of real-time messaging, voice and video conferencing, archiving, and search functionality. Users can send one-on-one direct messages, create private group chat and persistent open chat rooms, organize chats by topic, attached files to messages, and integrate with a variety of online third-party. Send emails to Slack Stop scrolling through long email chains and forward emails into Slack, where your team can quickly align without creating extra noise. Slack for Gmail sits alongside your inbox, making it easy to bring emails into a channel or DM with just a few clicks. With Slack for Gmail you can. Download Slack for free for mobile devices and desktop. Keep up with the conversation with our apps for iOS, Android, Mac, Windows and Linux.