Google’s making another chat app

It would appear that the next focus of instant messaging communications might lie on the business front. With Slack and Microsoft Teams proving popular with many companies, Google wants to get in on the game as The Information reveals the company is working on a new communication application aimed at workplaces.

This new product, which does not have a name at present, is designed to unify different Google services the company sells to businesses, including parts of its G Suite like corporate-grade Gmail, Google Drive and Hangouts in a way that they can likely manage the security around it and better integrate these tools into their other applications.

Hangouts itself has not proved very popular for Google with the company struggling to make headway in the competitive instant messaging space, but they’re hoping that business that leverages their services could then perhaps take advantage of a newer application that wraps all the functionality of their diverse service offering together and makes it easier for companies to communicate across teams and individually.

Many companies make use of Google’s G-Suite for a variety of business functions, but then still use Slack or Teams for other communication, something which Google no doubt wants to change. The company has not revealed any details about the software, and it will be interesting to see what they come up with that can lure customers away from these other platforms that are perhaps already widely integrated into company systems.

Google’s previous chat applications like Chat, Duo, ‘Allo and the aforementioned Hangouts have not been well received, so here’s hoping Google does something right this time around.

Last Updated: January 30, 2020