When Google finished migrating thelast few Hangouts users over to Chatlate last year, it marked the symbolic end of a tumultuous journey that saw the company try its hand at what seemed like every messaging solution it could think of. By comparison, Google is laser-focused now, investing its efforts inChat for web and enterprise usersandRCS for texting. Now, the company has announced some major changes in the pipeline for Google Chat.
With Google Chat’s focus on enterprise users, its main competitors now are apps likeSlack, which are designed to help team members not only communicate, but actively coordinate on projects. With that in mind,Google has announceda new interface for Chat and the addition of several new productivity tools (viaThe Verge).
First is a new Huddles function that works similarly toSlack’s feature of the same name, giving you a quick way to jump into an audio call with teammates on a project. Once the Huddle is started, you’re able to easily enable your camera for video chatting or share your screen with your coworkers.
Chat has also received a minor visual update and expanded support to as many as 500,000 participants in communities, which should be particularly helpful for crowdsourced projects or Chat communities being used as public forums. But perhaps the most exciting change has to do withGoogle’s new Duet AI utilities.
Google doesn’t specify when these changes will roll out to users, but Workspace rollouts usually happen over the course of 15 days starting from the date of announcement. However, considering some of these changes involve generative AI and Google has so far taken a cautious approach to its rollout of such features, Chat’s latest changes may take longer than usual to reach all users.
