Google Chat

Google Chat provides direct messages and spaces for team messaging within Google Workspace, with Gemini assistance, file sharing through Drive, meeting links through Meet and integration with the rest of the Workspace applications.

Being included rather than purchased is the fact that decides most adoptions of Google Chat, and it is worth being clear-eyed about. An organisation already paying for Workspace has team messaging at no additional cost, which is a strong argument against a separate Slack subscription and a weak argument if the organisation genuinely prefers the alternative.

Spaces holding files and tasks alongside conversation is the design that distinguishes it from a chat room, since a project discussion that also carries its documents and its outstanding actions is closer to a workspace than a message thread, and the Drive integration makes that natural rather than an attachment habit.

Gemini inside the conversation is where Google's position is strongest, because summarising a thread somebody has been away from is a genuinely useful application of a language model and the assistant already has permission to read exactly the messages that person could see. Workspace plans start at 7 dollars per user per month.