Let’s get one thing out of the way right off the bat: Google’s habit of repositioning products has become a bit of a punchline. From the seemingly endless cycle of shifting messaging service strategies to the recent branding 360 with the Google TV – Android TV – Google TV again saga, the company has a slight reputation for failing to commit to any particular concept for long. Sometimes, though, a new beginning makes sense. Sometimes, a product’s evolution seems appropriate. And sometimes, despite the well-warranted inclination to sigh at the notion of Yet Another Google Name Change, the reason for a rebranding actually resonates—and feels like a step in the right direction. That’s certainly the case with Google Workspace, a new identity Google is rolling out for the entity formerly known as G Suite (which itself was formerly known as both Google Apps and Google Apps for Your Domain) this week. Workspace is, on the surface, an updated name and brand for Google’s collection of productivity apps—Gmail, Docs, Calendar, Drive, and so on. The rebrand is more than just a new name: It also includes some significant changes both in function and in appearance. That means that all these apps’ logos are getting a big makeover—so get ready to say so long to the iconic Gmail envelope. “This is the moment in which we break free from defining the structure and the role of our offerings in terms that were invented by somebody else in a very different era,” says Javier Soltero, Google’s vice president and general manager of G Suite and now Workspace. So if it isn’t just a new name, what is it? Well, it’s complicated. Workspace isn’t exactly a new service , in and of itself. It’s more of a new mindset—a connective tissue that reimagines how Google’s productivity apps exist and reshapes them as more than just vaguely related individual pieces. “The space in between those apps becomes really important,” Soltero says.
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Gmail’s new logo is just a taste of Google’s plan to rethink productivity