Email is one thing, the other is chatting, and the other is video call. Why not just put them all together in one place?
After the redesigned Gmail for G Suite experience, meant to be presented during Google's upcoming Cloud Next '20 event, was leaked by developer Tahin Rahman in a tweet on Twitter, instead of waiting, Google decided to ignore its plan and go ahead to introduce the design officially.
Gmail for G Suite here, has been redesigned to be a hub that encompasses all of Google's productivity platforms.
This way, users can benefit by having the ability to access all of Google's collaboration tools without having to open another website or app.
"There's the task of bringing them together, and the task of making them greater than the sum of their parts," Javier Soltero, head of Google's G Suite division for productivity apps, said in an interview.
The redesign comes as companies and organizations around the world are shifting to remote work in the face of the 'COVID-19' coronavirus pandemic. Since the crisis, many have closed their offices and have started becoming depended on productivity software to keep their workers connected.
In the announcement, Google said that:
"But flexibility isn’t the only thing that workers want. Remote working has significantly increased the demands we’re getting from many directions—in both our professional and our personal lives. People tell us they feel overloaded with too much information and too many tasks across too many different tools. Instead of learning another tool, we need the tools we already use to be even more helpful, and work together, in an integrated, intuitive way."
"That's why today, we’re introducing a better home for work. G Suite now intelligently brings together the people, content, and tasks you need to make the most of your time. We’re integrating core tools like video, chat, email, files, and tasks, and making them better together, so that you can more easily stay on top of things, from anywhere."
In the redesigned Gmail, the app is having four bottom tabs: Mail, Chat, Rooms and Meet. On the Gmail for the web, these sections live in the left sidebar.
All of these are pretty self-explanatory.
Mail is the regular email section, Chat allows users to communicate with colleagues in an instant messaging-style conversations, Rooms is a Slack-like group chat experience, and Meet gives users the access to video-conferencing.
In both Chat and Rooms, Gmail is also allowing users to receive followup reminders if the people they are communicating with don't respond in time. This feature is similar to the nudge in Mail.
Users can also access third-party apps, like DocuSign, Salesforce, and Trello.
Other than that, G Suite users is getting a 'Do Not Disturb' status option to stop them from receiving notifications when they need to focus. They're accompanied by status notifications like 'Out of office' or 'In a meeting' to help others understand why they're not available.
People who are working together can also have access to shared files and task.
Putting everything together, things should be a lot easier for users working in an organization. Without having to have different apps open, the intergration should make collaboration much easier.
The redesign is a massive overhaul, considering that The app isn’t so much a “Gmail” anymore.
With Mail, Chat, Rooms and Meet put in one place, 'Gmail' is becoming a more complex service than ever before.
While it makes sense for Google to bring some of its tools together into one place to create a hub, Gmail seems to become a bit overloaded with information.
This is one of the reasons why Google is putting each of the tool into their own separate section, just to simplify things. This is in line with what Google characterizes as an “integrated workspace” that should make it easier for users to shift between these different modes of communication without feeling lost.
The goal is clear: turning Gmail into a one-stop-shop productivity.
But still, the additions are making the Gmail app a lot bloated and much more resource-intensive. Some Google products are already known to be resource-hungry. And this update to Gmail simply makes it an app that hunger for ever more memory.
It should be noted that the experience is initially available as an "early access preview", and only meant for G Suite organizations. This is because it makes no sense for Google to bring all of those features to regular Gmail users.
Regular Gmail users are already benefiting from the Meet integration. In the meantime, that's about it.
Google however, said that it is "actively thinking through how and when to bring this experience to the consumers who might want it."