Google Apps For Work Rebranded, Now G Suite

Google has re-branded and enhanced its productivity suite with new intelligent capabilities. G Suite is the new name for the group of applications that include Gmail, Google Calendar, Docs, Sheets, and Slides. It's a group of apps that the company is trying to push on organizations looking to make their employees more productive, with an emphasis on collaboration capabilities.

Docs, Sheets, and Slides will each be getting new features that is aimed at making it easier for users to create files quickly with the help of Google intelligence. Also, Google Calendar is getting a new feature that will make it easier to schedule meetings, while Drive has a new feature making it easier for teams to use.

A standout amongst the announcements for enterprises is a new Team Drives feature that lets organizations set up groups that own files inside Google Drive. It's a shift from the product's previous design, which required every document, spreadsheet or slide deck to have a single person own it. The change could be important for organizations that want to more easily manage files as people come and go from teams.

Now, teams can have their own folder inside Drive and can own all of the files inside of it. Administrators can control access to the team Drive, and people can come and go.

In addition, the Google Hangouts video-conferencing service will gain capabilities that make it possible for people to join meetings from any device, without needing to have an application or plugin installed.

Docs, Sheets, and Slides are each getting new features that is aimed at making it easier to intelligently create documents. In Docs, the existing Research feature has been rebranded as Explore and enhanced to quickly and automatically surface information about the subject of a document, both from the web and from files shared in Google Drive.

In Sheets, the Explore feature will now let users ask questions in natural language about data in a spreadsheet and get information back. It's similar to the Q&A feature in Microsoft's Power BI service, which makes it easier for people to get insight from potentially messy data without knowing complicated spreadsheet editing capabilities.

The Slides feature makes it easier for users to find images that fit into their presentations with its Explore functionality and will automatically help lay out text and images to make them more visually appealing, thanks to the power of machine learning.

Android users will also get access to a new Quick Access capability in Google Drive that's designed to give people fast access to the files they need to work on after they open the app. It's powered by machine learning and designed to reduce the amount of time that people have to spend searching Drive for the files they need.

Do you think this re-branding will help Google better compete with Microsoft Office 365?