Google wants to tear down the walls between communication platforms and is testing the possibility of sending messages to the competition via its own chat app.

Especially in organizations that still work hybrid, business chat platforms such as Google Chat, Microsoft Teams and Slack have become indispensable. However, these platforms refuse to talk to each other, which can lead to missed messages, communication silos, and a frustrating user experience for organizations using multiple platforms. These are not our words, they are Google’s, and the company now wants to do something about it.

There were numerous announcements for the Workspace suite at the Google Cloud Next conference, including the integration of Mio. This communication platform allows you to link the various chat applications together. Google wants to offer this to all of its Workspace users by default so they can also message Teams, Slack, and other fundamentally competing platforms from the built-in Google Chat app.

If you make any changes to the message after sending it, these are also synchronized with the other apps. Google will initially roll this out in beta and from early 2024 it will be available in all paid workspace plans that also include chat by default.

AI and Voice Messages

The addition of cross-platform communication isn’t the only news for Google Chat this week. During the Cloud Next conference, announcements poured in for Workspace. Among other things, Google wants to add voice messages to the chat.

A touch of AI couldn’t be missing, so Duet AI, Google’s version of Microsoft Copilot, is also being added to the chat platform to help you find messages and summarize conversations. Read here what else Duet AI can do.