58 ms·

G Suite: intelligent tools designed for teams

154 points by akrolsmir 10y ago

freewizard 10y ago
So Hangout is pivoting to a business tool in G Suite? While Allo/Duo are created for consumer market? Interesting if so, it's exactly the opposite to most other companies: create a consumer product, reuse brand and/or code for biz product.
- s3r3nity 10y ago
  Well my hypothesis would be that Microsoft and Box tends to work the other way around as well (biz product -> consumer)...though then again a generality like that for companies of massive size is tough statement to make.
rwc 10y ago
Interesting use of pronouns here... "adding her to the team" but "removing him from the team". Why not be consistent? "Drives help streamline teamwork from end-to-end, from onboarding a new team member (add her to the team and she instantly has access to all of the work in one place) to offboarding a departing team member (remove him from the team and all of his work stays right in place), and everything in-between."
- douche 10y ago
  I don't get the aversion to non-gendered pronouns. Them's and they's are A-OK.
  - s3r3nity 10y ago
    I think it's not grammatically accurate to use "them" and "they" for a singular subject; if it's one person or thing, the pronoun should be he/she/it or some combination. For press releases, the safe option is to be grammatically correct than colloquially acceptable. Nevertheless it could be one of those things that is in flux as part of the evolution of the English language.
    - jvagner 10y ago
      it is grammatically acceptable to do so.. historically speaking, "they" and "them" were singular-inclusive pronouns.
    - optimuspaul 10y ago
      I don't think it's a grammar thing at all it's a definition of the words thing, which guess what, it's covered already! they pronoun 1. used to refer to two or more people or things previously mentioned or easily identified. "the two men could get life sentences if they are convicted" informal a group of people in authority regarded collectively. "they cut my water off" 2. used to refer to a person of unspecified sex. "ask someone if they could help"
    - gohrt 10y ago
      It is "Grammatically accurate" as the writer and reader thing it is. English has no official grammar. Singular "they" has been a singular pronoun for centuries.
    - Lazare 10y ago
      > think it's not grammatically accurate to use "them" and "they" for a singular subject; That is incorrect. The "singular they" is grammatically correct and has been in common English use since the 14th century. (There is a very modern impression that this usage isn't somehow incorrect or non-traditional, but it has zero factual backing.) The only reason to avoid the "singular they" is that it may annoy some people who incorrectly believe it to be ungrammatical.
    - philtar 10y ago
      It is actually correct and is considered more respectful. e.g You don't refer to a king as he, you refer to a king as they.
currywurst 10y ago
G Suite .. really odd name. Then again, naming things is a hard computer science problem ;)
- Apocryphon 10y ago
  Pithy versus Not Pithy Problem.
- labster 10y ago
  They're taking the Alphabet thing a little too literally.
- pg_is_a_butt 10y ago
  hopefully invaliding this name will be easier.
- inopinatus 10y ago
  In my household, we are flabbergasted that Google's marketing team missed the unfortunate associations of this new name.
  - kristianp 10y ago
    Can I have a clue? I don't see it.
    - inopinatus 10y ago
      Sweet spot.
planetjones 10y ago
I have to take issue with the opening paragraph. It says that research shows we spend 3 out of 5 days working on stuff we weren't hired to do. But then it says attending meetings falls under that definition as does gathering information. A lot of people need to meet to gather information. Of course that's part of their jobs. While machine learning can, I am sure, help a lot the fallacy the opening paragraph starts with makes me lose faith in the whole article. They also don't cross reference this 'research'.
- douche 10y ago
  Improved communication and information sharing does sharply reduce the necessity of synchronous everybody-in-a-room or on-a-conference-call meetings. There are more effective ways to do this stuff if we would just embrace them.
tnorthcutt 10y ago
This appears to be a rebrand of Google Apps; https://apps.google.com https://apps.google.com now redirects to https://gsuite.google.com https://gsuite.google.com
oridecon 10y ago
Can't I pay to just use a custom domain in a regular Google account? All I want is to use it for my Gmail. I don't have any use for the "G Suite" features and I know that some features are not available there, especially newer ones. I'm probably leaving for another provider because of this. I'm more and more concerned about the @gmail.com lock-in. I don't even send any media attachments (audio, video) or store anything in my Drive since I know of several people getting banned and not even receiving a justification (anecdotal, but it's enough to make me nervous about it). I'm not saying that was the cause, but I can't know for sure, so...
- kej 10y ago
  If you don't want to pay the $5/month/user for G Suite, you can buy an account with a grandfathered free Google Apps plan and change the primary domain to yours.
  - oridecon 10y ago
    Can't the original owner find a way to recall the account? Saying he was hacked.
    - kej 10y ago
      Buy with a credit card through one of the companies that resells grandfathered Google Apps accounts and you should be okay. Edit: I just remembered reading an article [1] about hooking up a regular gmail account to the free tier of mailgun, so you send and receive through your custom domain but otherwise have a plain old gmail account. [1] https://simplyian.com/2015/01/07/Hacking-GMail-to-use-custom-domains-for-free/ https://simplyian.com/2015/01/07/Hacking-GMail-to-use-custom...
      - pkamb 10y ago
        > one of the companies that resells grandfathered Google Apps accounts wow, this is really a thing. https://www.gappsdomain.com/ https://www.gappsdomain.com/ http://getgapps.com/ http://getgapps.com/
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
cornchips 10y ago
Formerly: Google Apps for Your Domain, Google Apps, Google Apps for Business, and Google Apps for Work... A turd by any other name is still a turd. This name is definitely poor; people will have trouble with "suite", short of english/french speaking countries, and even in english speaking countries, considering suite and sweet are homophones and the fairly low usage of suite. Can anyone at google explain why the brand changes every couple years? New leadership?
- godzillabrennus 10y ago
  Must be new leadership or maybe too many marketing people getting a voice in product. I owned a company that was a Google reseller for a couple of years and when pitching it I would just call it gmail for your company. Brainstorm all the fancy names you want but people understand what you are talking about when you call it gmail. Microsoft even with all its flaws has never bothered to claim that a calendar is a standalone app. Actually, considering how badly they merged Sunrise into Outlook maybe they should...
  - bigtones 10y ago
    You're right - it's new leadership. Diane Greene.
- notatoad 10y ago
  is it a turd though? google apps works great for me, and seems to be pretty popular as far as i can tell. what benefit is there to rebranding? i suspect you're spot on with the new leadership guess - somebody wanted to leave their mark.
- fuck_google 10y ago
  No leadership?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
akurilin 10y ago
Official google drive client for Linux? :*(
- jakebasile 10y ago
  Probably never going to happen. https://abevoelker.github.io/how-long-since-google-said-a-google-drive-linux-client-is-coming/ https://abevoelker.github.io/how-long-since-google-said-a-go...
  - akurilin 10y ago
    Bummer. We'd consider moving off of Dropbox and have everything in one place if we could support all of our Linux machines. Right now we have to have our files in Dropbox and our documents in Google Drive.
    - OliPicard 10y ago
      Have you considered using Insync instead? I use it on an Ubuntu instance and it works like a charm with Google Drive.
0xCMP 10y ago
This change doesn't make "sense." They literally didn't explain at all how this would improve or change anything, but they spent the time to rename it, draw some cute gifs, and make a completely marketing fluff video about the future of work. You know what company sounds like mostly marketing fluff? Hint: It's the one "no one ever got fired for buying [from]."
nightski 10y ago
A new name! That is exactly what google apps was missing. Now I'll be so much more productive yay. It's too bad I switched to Fastmail though.
awad 10y ago
In theory, the new functionality is cool and will help people be more productive. As a reasonably happy work customer, I'm quite excited to try these out. But I am not sure why they decided to rename it...again. Does no one at Google understand branding?
riffic 10y ago
"G Sweet" ? I'm going to feel like such a dick saying that with a serious look on my face.
- toxik 10y ago
  Then there's the fact that suite is very commonly mistaken for suit by non-native English speakers like myself. Maybe that's a better name, though. G Suit.
fooey 10y ago
I really miss getting custom domains on Google Apps for free. I've never found a good way to do email for cheapskates since then.
- hackernews2000 10y ago
  This "announcement" is full of buzzwords and useless marketing mumbo jumbo, but doesn't say if free accounts created years ago will remain free. Can anybody please confirm?
  - hackernews2000 10y ago
    Thankfully: "Google Apps Free Edition (legacy) remains the same" https://support.google.com/a/answer/7126147 https://support.google.com/a/answer/7126147
- Anasufovic 10y ago
  Secondary markets like eBay will sometimes have some decent deals.
- sparky_ 10y ago
  Yeah I am also grandfathered, I have my last name as a domain. I'm surprised they don't offer a free or at least very cheap plan for personal users doing this.
dennisgorelik 10y ago
That G-naming reminded me "G-spot".
tominous 10y ago
I can see why they might want to rebrand, given that (a) the word "app" has taken on a specific meaning in the mobile space and (b) Google as a whole is now branded with a stylised "G". EDIT: It's hard for this product to have its own stable brand identity. All it does is add a feature to the existing Google products: the ability to use a custom domain, with some useful tools to manage that namespace. Maybe the word Domain should be emphasised: "G Domain Suite" (or Domain Pack/Extensions/Link). Sounds better than just G Suite anyway.
- pg_is_a_butt 10y ago
  (a) i use google apps to host backend services that power my "app" in the mobile space. (b) you're all idiots.
HugoDaniel 10y ago
Why not G Spot ? :)
- reactor 10y ago
  Don't give them ideas!
- anotherevan 10y ago
  That's what they're renaming Google Maps to. https://twitter.com/HackerNewsOnion/status/781616319376527364 https://twitter.com/HackerNewsOnion/status/78161631937652736...
puzzle 10y ago
There's, uh, prior art for the name: https://www.instagram.com/p/5dDY0YtgEP/ https://www.instagram.com/p/5dDY0YtgEP/
- eitally 10y ago
  That's, uh, also a Google thing. But yes, that did cause significant googler confusion this morning.
aikah 10y ago
"G Suite: intelligent tools designed for teams" : corporate gibberish.
- reagan83 10y ago
  The new use of the word "intelligent" to describe their tools makes me wonder if the previous tools lacked that very ingredient. Or, as you aptly mentioned, these are wasteful words.

154 points by akrolsmir 10y ago

So Hangout is pivoting to a business tool in G Suite? While Allo/Duo are created for consumer market? Interesting if so, it's exactly the opposite to most other companies: create a consumer product, reuse brand and/or code for biz product.

s3r3nity 10y ago
Well my hypothesis would be that Microsoft and Box tends to work the other way around as well (biz product -> consumer)...though then again a generality like that for companies of massive size is tough statement to make.

rwc 10y ago

Interesting use of pronouns here... "adding her to the team" but "removing him from the team". Why not be consistent? "Drives help streamline teamwork from end-to-end, from onboarding a new team member (add her to the team and she instantly has access to all of the work in one place) to offboarding a departing team member (remove him from the team and all of his work stays right in place), and everything in-between."

douche 10y ago
I don't get the aversion to non-gendered pronouns. Them's and they's are A-OK.
- s3r3nity 10y ago
  I think it's not grammatically accurate to use "them" and "they" for a singular subject; if it's one person or thing, the pronoun should be he/she/it or some combination. For press releases, the safe option is to be grammatically correct than colloquially acceptable. Nevertheless it could be one of those things that is in flux as part of the evolution of the English language.
  - jvagner 10y ago
    it is grammatically acceptable to do so.. historically speaking, "they" and "them" were singular-inclusive pronouns.
  - optimuspaul 10y ago
    I don't think it's a grammar thing at all it's a definition of the words thing, which guess what, it's covered already! they pronoun 1. used to refer to two or more people or things previously mentioned or easily identified. "the two men could get life sentences if they are convicted" informal a group of people in authority regarded collectively. "they cut my water off" 2. used to refer to a person of unspecified sex. "ask someone if they could help"
  - gohrt 10y ago
    It is "Grammatically accurate" as the writer and reader thing it is. English has no official grammar. Singular "they" has been a singular pronoun for centuries.
  - Lazare 10y ago
    > think it's not grammatically accurate to use "them" and "they" for a singular subject; That is incorrect. The "singular they" is grammatically correct and has been in common English use since the 14th century. (There is a very modern impression that this usage isn't somehow incorrect or non-traditional, but it has zero factual backing.) The only reason to avoid the "singular they" is that it may annoy some people who incorrectly believe it to be ungrammatical.
  - philtar 10y ago
    It is actually correct and is considered more respectful. e.g You don't refer to a king as he, you refer to a king as they.

currywurst 10y ago

G Suite .. really odd name. Then again, naming things is a hard computer science problem ;)

Apocryphon 10y ago
Pithy versus Not Pithy Problem.
labster 10y ago
They're taking the Alphabet thing a little too literally.
pg_is_a_butt 10y ago
hopefully invaliding this name will be easier.
inopinatus 10y ago
In my household, we are flabbergasted that Google's marketing team missed the unfortunate associations of this new name.
- kristianp 10y ago
  Can I have a clue? I don't see it.
  - inopinatus 10y ago
    Sweet spot.

planetjones 10y ago

I have to take issue with the opening paragraph. It says that research shows we spend 3 out of 5 days working on stuff we weren't hired to do. But then it says attending meetings falls under that definition as does gathering information. A lot of people need to meet to gather information. Of course that's part of their jobs. While machine learning can, I am sure, help a lot the fallacy the opening paragraph starts with makes me lose faith in the whole article. They also don't cross reference this 'research'.

douche 10y ago
Improved communication and information sharing does sharply reduce the necessity of synchronous everybody-in-a-room or on-a-conference-call meetings. There are more effective ways to do this stuff if we would just embrace them.

tnorthcutt 10y ago

This appears to be a rebrand of Google Apps; https://apps.google.com https://apps.google.com now redirects to https://gsuite.google.com https://gsuite.google.com

oridecon 10y ago

Can't I pay to just use a custom domain in a regular Google account? All I want is to use it for my Gmail. I don't have any use for the "G Suite" features and I know that some features are not available there, especially newer ones. I'm probably leaving for another provider because of this. I'm more and more concerned about the @gmail.com lock-in. I don't even send any media attachments (audio, video) or store anything in my Drive since I know of several people getting banned and not even receiving a justification (anecdotal, but it's enough to make me nervous about it). I'm not saying that was the cause, but I can't know for sure, so...

kej 10y ago
If you don't want to pay the $5/month/user for G Suite, you can buy an account with a grandfathered free Google Apps plan and change the primary domain to yours.
- oridecon 10y ago
  Can't the original owner find a way to recall the account? Saying he was hacked.
  - kej 10y ago
    Buy with a credit card through one of the companies that resells grandfathered Google Apps accounts and you should be okay. Edit: I just remembered reading an article [1] about hooking up a regular gmail account to the free tier of mailgun, so you send and receive through your custom domain but otherwise have a plain old gmail account. [1] https://simplyian.com/2015/01/07/Hacking-GMail-to-use-custom-domains-for-free/ https://simplyian.com/2015/01/07/Hacking-GMail-to-use-custom...
    - pkamb 10y ago
      > one of the companies that resells grandfathered Google Apps accounts wow, this is really a thing. https://www.gappsdomain.com/ https://www.gappsdomain.com/ http://getgapps.com/ http://getgapps.com/

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

cornchips 10y ago

Formerly: Google Apps for Your Domain, Google Apps, Google Apps for Business, and Google Apps for Work... A turd by any other name is still a turd. This name is definitely poor; people will have trouble with "suite", short of english/french speaking countries, and even in english speaking countries, considering suite and sweet are homophones and the fairly low usage of suite. Can anyone at google explain why the brand changes every couple years? New leadership?

godzillabrennus 10y ago
Must be new leadership or maybe too many marketing people getting a voice in product. I owned a company that was a Google reseller for a couple of years and when pitching it I would just call it gmail for your company. Brainstorm all the fancy names you want but people understand what you are talking about when you call it gmail. Microsoft even with all its flaws has never bothered to claim that a calendar is a standalone app. Actually, considering how badly they merged Sunrise into Outlook maybe they should...
- bigtones 10y ago
  You're right - it's new leadership. Diane Greene.
notatoad 10y ago
is it a turd though? google apps works great for me, and seems to be pretty popular as far as i can tell. what benefit is there to rebranding? i suspect you're spot on with the new leadership guess - somebody wanted to leave their mark.
fuck_google 10y ago
No leadership?

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

akurilin 10y ago

Official google drive client for Linux? :*(

jakebasile 10y ago
Probably never going to happen. https://abevoelker.github.io/how-long-since-google-said-a-google-drive-linux-client-is-coming/ https://abevoelker.github.io/how-long-since-google-said-a-go...
- akurilin 10y ago
  Bummer. We'd consider moving off of Dropbox and have everything in one place if we could support all of our Linux machines. Right now we have to have our files in Dropbox and our documents in Google Drive.
  - OliPicard 10y ago
    Have you considered using Insync instead? I use it on an Ubuntu instance and it works like a charm with Google Drive.

0xCMP 10y ago

This change doesn't make "sense." They literally didn't explain at all how this would improve or change anything, but they spent the time to rename it, draw some cute gifs, and make a completely marketing fluff video about the future of work. You know what company sounds like mostly marketing fluff? Hint: It's the one "no one ever got fired for buying [from]."

nightski 10y ago

A new name! That is exactly what google apps was missing. Now I'll be so much more productive yay. It's too bad I switched to Fastmail though.

awad 10y ago

In theory, the new functionality is cool and will help people be more productive. As a reasonably happy work customer, I'm quite excited to try these out. But I am not sure why they decided to rename it...again. Does no one at Google understand branding?

riffic 10y ago

"G Sweet" ? I'm going to feel like such a dick saying that with a serious look on my face.

toxik 10y ago
Then there's the fact that suite is very commonly mistaken for suit by non-native English speakers like myself. Maybe that's a better name, though. G Suit.

fooey 10y ago

I really miss getting custom domains on Google Apps for free. I've never found a good way to do email for cheapskates since then.

hackernews2000 10y ago
This "announcement" is full of buzzwords and useless marketing mumbo jumbo, but doesn't say if free accounts created years ago will remain free. Can anybody please confirm?
- hackernews2000 10y ago
  Thankfully: "Google Apps Free Edition (legacy) remains the same" https://support.google.com/a/answer/7126147 https://support.google.com/a/answer/7126147
Anasufovic 10y ago
Secondary markets like eBay will sometimes have some decent deals.
sparky_ 10y ago
Yeah I am also grandfathered, I have my last name as a domain. I'm surprised they don't offer a free or at least very cheap plan for personal users doing this.

dennisgorelik 10y ago

That G-naming reminded me "G-spot".

tominous 10y ago

I can see why they might want to rebrand, given that (a) the word "app" has taken on a specific meaning in the mobile space and (b) Google as a whole is now branded with a stylised "G". EDIT: It's hard for this product to have its own stable brand identity. All it does is add a feature to the existing Google products: the ability to use a custom domain, with some useful tools to manage that namespace. Maybe the word Domain should be emphasised: "G Domain Suite" (or Domain Pack/Extensions/Link). Sounds better than just G Suite anyway.

pg_is_a_butt 10y ago
(a) i use google apps to host backend services that power my "app" in the mobile space. (b) you're all idiots.

HugoDaniel 10y ago

Why not G Spot ? :)

reactor 10y ago
Don't give them ideas!
anotherevan 10y ago
That's what they're renaming Google Maps to. https://twitter.com/HackerNewsOnion/status/781616319376527364 https://twitter.com/HackerNewsOnion/status/78161631937652736...

puzzle 10y ago

There's, uh, prior art for the name: https://www.instagram.com/p/5dDY0YtgEP/ https://www.instagram.com/p/5dDY0YtgEP/

eitally 10y ago
That's, uh, also a Google thing. But yes, that did cause significant googler confusion this morning.

aikah 10y ago

"G Suite: intelligent tools designed for teams" : corporate gibberish.

reagan83 10y ago
The new use of the word "intelligent" to describe their tools makes me wonder if the previous tools lacked that very ingredient. Or, as you aptly mentioned, these are wasteful words.