G Suite Will Now Be Google Workplace

Google is doing some rebranding as of late and one aspect of that move is the new Google Workplace coming to replace G Suite.  This is more then the recent Gmail rebranding as it will be coming with changes to the service as a whole.  Many Gmail users may have noticed that Google has been adding its other services as a direct integration into Gmail, like Chat and their office suite, and now those changes will be coming to the business side of the Google ecosystem.  “Work is no longer a physical place that we go to, necessarily,” Google Workspace VP Javier Soltero stated during the press meeting and a lot of the changes are certainly focused on working from home and virtual offices. 

One of the main goals of Google Workplace is to unify the currently existing services within the ecosystem, which we find as a great step in the right direction as Gsuite has never truly felt like a fully integrated service like Microsoft Office, but it certainly got the job done either way.  However, with the recent pandemic pushing work from home, the slight bonuses this full unification will have are a very nice touch on the service.  Google Meet is a major focus point of this new service and that will certainly help businesses struggling with the whole "virtual office" concept as employees are currently jumping in and out of applications and services to work together. 

However, it is not all good news.  First the tiers are being pushed as the same price as Gsuite with a $6 a month/user entry level and a $12 a month/user for the standard package, but we now have a $18 a month/user as a "pro" plan that seems to list a bunch of feature we used to have in the cheaper plans.  On top of the pricing changes, we have completely lost unlimited drive storage and have been reduced to 30Gb, 2Tb, and 5TB plans based on your package.  There is also a planned Essentials plan that won't use all the features of the basic plan, but will cost $8 a month/user, so we will need to see how this works out as the price currently does not make much sense.

Overall the improvements sound amazing and we are excited to see them here as we do use Gsuite ourselves.  However, like most services, it does appear that we will be getting less for the same price after the upgrade goes though.