2020 in review

What we were up to in 2020

• Chat: Desktop client

Chat got its very own desktop client! You may not remember, but before this year, all we had was chat.google.com. No Gmail, no desktop client. The desktop client runs on a brand new type of technology, it is not installed anymore - a lot went into it. Give it a try if you haven't already and find the client you prefer.

• Chat: GOODBYE HANGOUTS! 🎉🔥🚀🥳

They did it! You can finally managed to shut down Hangouts and move your tired users to Chat. I hope you did.

• Contacts: Healer

Contacts will now update a person's name in your "other contacts" if it changes in your directory. Seems minor, but nothing like referring to the wrong name from before a marriage (or after a divorce!) to mess up communication.

• Currents: Re-launch

Google+ became Currents and brought new functionality, such as better post editing and a fresh new layout. Your social network is now bigger than ever.

• Drive: Shared Drive Folder Sharing

The missing piece in Drive has been delivered - this ties together My Drive and Shared Drive and was the reason shortcuts were necessary. You are now officially able to share folders. If it feels like it was always possible, Google did a good job.

• Drive: Shortcuts

You are now able to create as many shortcuts to your files as you like. This simplified the way files are handled and made Drive behave more like desktop computers. Also, this enabled (for the first time) to have shortcuts point to items stored across several Shared Drives or My Drive.

• Drive: Visitor Sharing

Visitor Sharing was the most launch this year and you all should rejoice because you now can collaborate with your clients and suppliers - in your Google Documents. The future has arrived! This has been long in the making and finally released this year.

• Google Groups: Complete redesign

You probably run on Google Groups, but may not visit groups.google.com a lot. If you do, you will see that it looks a lot better and managing groups has gotten much simpler.

• Gmail: Chat & Meet integration

Gmail has a world-class integration with Chat and Meet. You can chat with your team from one window, share and edit documents, share tasks in chat rooms, see your upcoming Meets... And all of that on mobile, too.

• Meet: Grid view

It is easy to forget, but Meet had a 2x2 "tiled view" until April. Then, the engineers went into overdrive and cranked out one feature after the other - Grid view was the first. Meet increased to a 4x4 screen and then to flexible total of 49 participants.

• Meet: Polling

Meet owners (or moderators) can now poll their audiences, an important feature for very big, very formal or very funny meetings. Most mature conferencing services have this, so does Meet. What most mature conferencing services lack have is Drive support (or they squirrel their results away on servers you have never heard about, on conditions you have never heard about). Meet sends you a Sheet. Simple.

• Meet: Q&A

Your audience no longer has to interrupt your monologues by speaking up or using the chat function. They can also vote on the question you should answer first.

• Meet: Breakout rooms

Breakout rooms enable you to split your audience into smaller Meets so they can work on different topics. When the working groups are done, you click a button and everyone is back in the big lobby. Thanks to innovations such as this, Meet is quickly becoming a full-blown conferencing tool.

• Meet: Background blurring

Background blurring caused an enormous splash. More than just a fancy feature, it helps people show their face even if their surroundings are not ideal. As a result, people are more likely to open their cameras and Meets are friendlier than video calls using legacy technology.

• Meet: Background changing

If blurring is not enough, you can now completely change your background and transport yourself to a tropical beach (or to the Death Star).

Is Google slowing down?

It is easy to forget just how much we got from Google Workspace. 2020 did weird things to time - it sped up and slowed to a crawl, and sometimes sitting at home it did seem like our service did not innovate at all. Hopefully that is disproven now - it's not a competition, but it probably out-innovated anything else for the 5th year since we are using it. The conveyor belt is speeding up.

What is changing: We have gotten used to it, and that is a feature of working with Google. If that is the case with you, that is a sign that your organization did sped up, became more nimble, is now able to absorb more. And that is a big "mission accomplished" to take you into 2021.

There you have it - another year-end summary, in case you needed one. Nothing is slowing down, much to the contrary, which is good after a year that seemed downright boring at times. I'm very excited about the next year! There is a lot coming, and you will have a front row seat. Google Workplace is definitely the place to be in 2021. Thank you for reading!