Dive Brief:
- Google announced updates to its enterprise G Suite product including Gmail add-ons and the evolution of Hangouts with the split to Hangouts Meet and Hangouts Chat per a company blog post.
- Streamlining chat was a key element in the updates with moves like dropping SMS functionality in the classic Hangouts app and upgrading SMS with Android Messages making it the primary place for SMS messaging.
- The updates also include fully transitioning Google Talk to Hangouts with Gmail Talk users set to receive an invitation to switch to Hangouts in the next few weeks. An automatic transition kicks in after June 26. Third-party XMPP clients will continue to work with Hangouts for chat and the legacy Google Talk Android app will stop functioning.
Dive Insight:
With messaging an increasingly popular way that consumers engage online, Google continues to restructure its offerings to make sure it has a competitive strategy here. The search giant is pushing deeper into messaging both on the enterprise side with Hangouts as well as on the consumer side with apps such as Allo.
By removing SMS messaging from Hangouts, Google is driving users to Android Message as the primary place to access SMS. In general, the relevance of SMS continues to decline as free messaging apps like WhatsApp, Messenger and others grow.
The Google Hangouts enterprise makeover was first announced earlier this month via a company blog post covering the split to Google Meet and Google Chat. Meet was designed to make it easy for users to start video meetings with only a link and not requiring an account, plugin or download. Google Chat’s functionality included allowing users to create virtual chat rooms for projects, and the G Suite integration allowed users to easily share documents, photos and videos along with supporting bots, custom scripting and third-party apps.
Google said it sees the updates as a way to improve user experience in the entire G Suite by focusing and prioritizing features, despite any initial inconvenience. Another change announced with the update is that Google+ functionality in Gmail will be retired.