Google Workspace

A handful of factors play into the quality of your video call, and Google Meet now wants to “make it easier for end users to understand how their local desktop and network environments affect meeting quality” with a new Troubleshooting menu. 

Google is touting a “more tailored experience” on a revised Meet homepage for Workspace customers that provides three precise options for creating a new meeting.

Google started the week with a big outage that took down Gmail, Drive, and all other Workspace apps. As promised, Google now has a detailed explanation on the outage and steps it will take to prevent future incidents.

With the Workspace suite of products, Google wants to leverage machine learning to boost user productivity. One such application of those automated smarts is in Google Meet with Live Captions, which are now available in four more languages.

Google is rolling out new features across Docs and other Workspace apps to increase interoperability with Word and the Microsoft Office suite. It comes as some teams might choose to use both sets of tools, while others still work with partners that don’t use cloud offerings.

While Microsoft is clearly focused on iterating the Chromium version of Edge, the company’s previous browser is still available. Google announced today that Workspace apps will cease support for Internet Explorer 11 in March.

After coming to education users in September, Google Meet attendance reports are now rolling out to enterprise customers with more insights and additional features.

A report in the Wall Street Journal today revealed that the Biden-Harris presidential transition team has turned to Google Workspace in light of the current administration and US government not yet officially recognizing this month’s election results.

As previewed in August, Google Meet is now rolling out breakout rooms. At launch, it’s only available to Enterprise for Education customers and meant to aid distance learning.

Over the past few weeks, Google has been replacing the logos and icons of some of its most beloved services, and the public reaction has been… mixed. Some people don’t care, while others absolutely hate the new icons. If you fall into the latter group, here’s how to replace Google’s new icons for Gmail, Calendar, and other apps with the older, arguably better versions on Android, iPhone, and Chrome.

Since launch, rooms in Google Chat have had conversations grouped into threads. This approach made sense for some, but was a barrier to high-volume teams and contrasted with Slack. Google is now adding the ability to have unthreaded Chat rooms.

Earlier this year, Google set a final deprecation timeline for Chrome Apps. Ahead of that, the Google Keep Chrome app will stop working in February.

Google Meet continues its onslaught of pre-announced features today with the launch of custom backgrounds during video calls. This customization is a staple of modern conferencing apps, and one that helps convey “more of your personality.”

As of the start of this month, Workspace customers can get access to an integrated Gmail experience that includes Chat and Rooms. Google is now boosting the Gmail experience by letting Chat users set an “away” or “Do not disturb” status.

Have you received an email about a new comment in a Google Docs or other Google Workspace file you don’t recognize? Do not click the included link, as it’s likely part of a new source of spam emails that are abusing comments in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides.

Google’s editing applications can open and edit Microsoft files, with that capability recently coming to Android. When opening Office files from the Drive web client, Google will now directly open them in editing mode.