Google to unify Gmail, Chat, Rooms, Meet features to make 'home for work' in G Suite

Google has been time and again introducing new features to its various apps over the last few months. This time, it has come up with a redesign of Gmail for G Suite business users. The company is integrating Gmail, Chat, Rooms and Meet.

“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,” informed Google in a blog post . The company is branding this initiative as a ‘better home for work’."

As per a report in  The Verge , G Suite customers will get to see an “early access preview” of the unified app this week and receive it later this year. Google is currently working on putting these tools into the same app on phone or desktop.

Once this app is introduced, desktop users will get a view with a chat in one column, a doc in another, and a Google Meet video chat hovering over both.

The company has been working on a new integrated workspace designed to bring together all the core components of communication and collaboration into a single surface, G Suite VP and GM Javier Soltero told TechCrunch .

The idea behind this is not just to bring these ingredients into the same pane of glass, but also realising something that’s greater than the sum of its parts, he added.

Google in May merged its Meet video conferencing service into Gmail . Meet offers features such as simple scheduling and screen sharing, real-time captions and layouts that adapt to preferences of users.

The Meet feature came to Gmail at a time when a substantial number of people were relying on a host of video conferencing apps while working from home after the outbreak of COVID-19.