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Migrating your data to Google Workspace is about to get a whole lot easier

February 24, 2022
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Getting your data moved over to Google Workspace should soon be a much smoother process thanks to a new release from the company.

Google says the Workspace Migrate tool offers an easier way for admins to assess and plan migration projects, and “confidently migrate their users and large amounts of critical content directly into Google Workspace.”

Previously announced in beta way back in 2019, the tool is now generally available to admins across the world for select Google Workspace Editions.

Google Workspace Migrate

In a blog post announcing the news, Google noted that its new tool should be particularly useful for those admins looking to move a large amount of enterprise data, offering a secure and effective way to migrate information and set up on-premises infrastructure.

This includes the ability to migrate data from a wide range of sources, including Microsoft Exchange (covering Exchange 2010, 2013, 2016, and Microsoft 365), Microsoft SharePoint (including SharePoint 2010, 2013, 2016, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive for Business), Microsoft OneDrive, file shares, and Box migrations.

Google Workspace Migrate tool — (Image credit: Google Workspace)

It will also support legacy G Suite Business and Google Workspace environments, enabling admins to selectively migrate Gmail, Calendar, Drive, and more data between Google Workspace environments.

Alternatively, the tool will allow admins to migrate all users from one environment to another, or move specific user data (such as organizational units, users, or subsets of data) between Google Workspace environments.

The tool will also allow admins to easily identify project progress and status through frequently updated and detailed logs, as well as being able to quickly scan source environments to help accurately plan for key project milestones and watch points.

Google Workspace Migrate is available now for users on Google Workspace Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Standard, Education Plus, and legacy G Suite Business – however not for Google Workspace Essentials or legacy G Suite Basic users just yet.

> Google Workspace Individual offers all you need to start and run a small business

> Google takes aim at Microsoft 365 with small but important update

> Google is closing one of its least-loved Workspace apps

The news comes soon after Google revealed it would be cutting down on users accessing Google Workspace for free.

The company announced that all G Suite legacy free edition users would soon be shifted over to a paid version of Google Workspace from July 1 in order to ensure they kept access to tools such as Gmail, Meet and Docs.

Google Workplace plans start at $ 6/user/month for its Business Starter option, with Business Standard ($ 12/user/month) and Business Plus ($ 18 /user/month) also on offer, providing an increasing level of services with the amount paid.

Google plans to automatically move free users from May 1 to “an upgraded Google Workspace paid subscription”, based on its analysis of the customer's usage and the features it thinks you'll need. The company is also offering businesses who don't want to pay or upgrade the chance to export their data at no extra cost.

Here’s our list of the best productivity tools on the market

Via 9to5Google

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February 24, 2022
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As the cost of cellular data plans has decreased significantly in recent years, Google has revealed its plans to discontinue its Lite Mode feature in Google Chrome on Android.

First released back in 2014 under the name “Data Saver”, the feature was later rebranded as “Lite Mode” in 2019 and was designed to help those with slow or limited data connections.

When enabled on an Android smartphone, Lite Mode would send some of a user's web traffic through Google's own servers before it was downloaded on their device. If pages loaded slowly, the search giant's servers would simplify them so that less data would be downloaded to a user's device.

While Lite Mode helped those with less mobile data avoid being hit with heavy data overage charges, the feature didn't work with private browsing enabled and it also prevented users from accessing pages on a local network such as an internal company site.

Sunsetting Chrome Lite Mode

In a new support document, Google has revealed its plans to sunset Chrome Lite Mode with the release of Google Chrome 100 in March of this year.

The feature will be turned off for those still using it on March 29 as the search giant has observed a decrease in the cost for mobile data in a number of countries in recent years. At the same time, Google has also made improvements to Chrome to “further minimize data usage and improve web page loading”.

> Google Chrome update makes searching your history less of a nightmare

> Google Chrome steals one of the best new Edge features

> Chrome is making it easier to remember passwords and sensitive information

Although Lite Mode is being discontinued, the company remains committed to ensuring Chrome can deliver a fast webpage loading experience on mobile going forward.

If you still want to limit the amount of data your Android smartphone uses, you can try restricting background data for individual apps in settings, limit how often apps sync and what they update, use some of your apps offline and try using Pocket or a similar service to download and save web pages to read later when connected to Wi-Fi.

We’ve also rounded up the best browsers and the best business smartphones

Via 9to5Google

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February 23, 2022
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Google has finally confirmed the date when it will be closing its Hangouts instant messaging service for good.

The company has revealed that enterprise and business users on “Classic Hangouts” will be upgraded to the new Google Chat service by March 22, 2022.

In a blog post, the company added that the move will ensure all Google Workspace customers will be using the same platform, with anyone trying to access Hangouts being redirected across to Google Chat.

Farewell Google Hangouts

The news brings an end to a rather protracted saga for Google that saw it extend the deadline for Hangouts' retirement several times.

News of a move first emerged in October 2019, with Hangouts officially rebranded as Google Chat for what was then G Suite enterprise users back in November 2020, and user migration over to the new service beginning the following month.

The news came as Google also revealed it would rebrand its video conferencing service (then Hangouts Meet) to Google Meet.

Now, the “final phase” of the migration will be complete within weeks, with Google noting that “it is not possible to opt out of this change”, and that all classic Hangouts applications will also be disabled, including the Android and iOS apps.

However, users will be able to export their historic Hangouts and Chat data using a special Google tool.

> Google Meet takes its first step towards the metaverse

> There's an all-new free version of Google Workspace for work

> Google is closing one of its least-loved Workspace apps

The change will not affect Hangouts users with only personal Google accounts, but it's likely that they will see a similar change soon.

For now, if your organization’s Google Workspace Admin console setting is set to “Chat and classic Hangouts,” the automatic upgrade to the new platform will occur “over the course of three weeks starting March 22, 2022.”

Customers with the “Classic Hangouts only” setting will be upgraded over the course of five weeks, starting April 4, 2022.

Here’s our list of the best online collaboration tools right now

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February 22, 2022
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Researchers discovered a new, modular banking trojan with ties to Cerberus and Alien that has the capability to become a much larger threat than it is now.
Threatpost

February 21, 2022
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One of Google's most unsung apps is getting a useful upgrade that could help you clear out unwanted items from your Android phone.

As the name suggests, the Files by Google app governs all the files, apps and other items on your Android device, but can often provide a somewhat cluttered and even confusing experience.

However, an update to the app is adding a number of new search chip filters to help you quickly and easily find items that can be deleted to free up cloud storage space.

Files by Google update

Search chips essentially look to display possible results as a user is typing in the search bar, offering autofill suggestions and other possibilities for what it thinks they could be looking for.

Now, users will see new filters when accessing the “Browse” menu in Files by Google. For example, selecting Apps within this menu will now offer the chance to filter out into certain groups – currently “large apps”, “unused apps” and “Games” – with each list also displaying extra information such as the size of the app and when it was last updated.

The app allows multiple filters to be active at the same time, so you could, for example, quickly spot which games you've installed but have never actually played.

The tool appears to be active now, so users should look to update their Files by Google app as soon as possible to benefit.

> Google Docs will now practically write your documents for you

> Google Workspace update wants to bring all your work tools together

> It'll soon be easier to track down all your lost Google Workspace docs

The company has also recently introduced chip search filters to a number of its Google Workspace software tools, including Gmail and Google Drive, giving users a faster way to find the exact file they are hunting for.

Going forward, instead of just using keywords such as “marketing plan” or “sales report,” which may return results that are too broad, users can use search chips to surface more relevant results.

The results can be file types, such as a Google Doc, PDF or image, but also related to a specific person, location (such as in a shared drive or folder) or when a file was last modified.

Here’s our pick of the best business cloud storage offerings around today

Via AndroidPolice

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February 17, 2022
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Google has unveiled Roboto Serif, a new typeface for Android that it says should be ideal for reading text online.

Roboto Serif is available now via Google Fonts and will come included with Android as part of Google's Material Design ethos.

Google says it created Roboto Serif for reading because we spend around seven hours per day reading things online. Clearly, a font designed specifically to do so was needed.

“Roboto Serif joins the functional Roboto superfamily alongside Roboto Sans, Mono, Slab, and Condensed,” says Google font consultant Sarah Daily. “But unlike Roboto Slab, the design of which was derived directly from Roboto Sans, this newest serif brings its own identity to the collection.”

“We wanted it to feel comfortable next to a sans-serif, and not to feel cluttered. It doesn't need to have serifs everywhere to drive home the point that, ‘I am a serif and have serifs in all the places serifs go,” addec Google's Rob Giampietro.

> The new-look Gmail has landed – here's all you need to know

> Google is closing one of its least-loved Workspace apps

> Google Workspace is getting a major upgrade to rival Microsoft 365

Fonts glorious fonts

According to 9to5Google, Roboto Serif has four axes: weight: 100–900; width: condensed, regular, extended; optical size: with or without size, 8–14; and grade: -50–100.

Google has also released a full typo specimen document detailing all of the technical details for Roboto Serif, including a range of examples of how the font can be applied in use cases from recipe books to music playlists.

“Google Fonts’ mission is to make web typography better for everyone,” the book added, “We’ve invested heavily in variable font typefaces, as well as in tools for their production, testing, and use, and we’re excited to see what creative designers and developers do with this technology.”

We’ve also featured the best free writing software around

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February 16, 2022
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Working together online with your colleagues has always been an essential part of Google Docs but with the launch of smart canvas last year, collaborating with others using the company's office software has become even more intuitive.

In order to help users sort through all of their documents in their inbox, the search giant is introducing automatically generated summaries in Docs which provide a brief overview of the main points in a document. While Google's AI will suggest a summary for you, you can also edit a summary manually and this new feature is now generally available.

With more people working from home than ever before, less documents are being printed. Instead, employees are collaborating on documents online using their laptops and smartphones and as such, page breaks and margins no longer hold the weight they once did.

For this reason, Google is launching pageless format in Doc that allows users to remove the boundaries of a page to create documents that expand to the device or screen they're using. As part of the move to hybrid work, there is less need to print which is why pageless format makes it easier for teams to collaborate on documents with wide tables, large images or detailed feedback in comments. However, if you do want to print a document, you can easily switch back to a paginated view.

Interactive building blocks

With the introduction of smart canvas last year, Google brought interactive building blocks like smart chips, templates and checklists to its office software.

Smart canvas also allows users to pull rich information directly into their documents by using @-mentions to insert smart chips for peoples, files and meetings. Google also recently expanded the “@” menu to make it easier to insert additional things like images, tables and templates.

> Google Workspace update wants to bring all your work tools together

> Keeping track of your colleagues just got a whole lot easier in Google Sheets

> Google Docs is getting a major accessibility upgrade

Now though, the company is bringing this capability to email by allowing users to collaborate on email drafts in Docs with its new email draft template. When an email is ready to send, you just need to click a button to export the content into a draft email in Gmail with all of the relevant fields already populated. At the same time, Google also recently launched a meeting notes template that automatically imports any relevant information from a Google Calendar meeting invite including smart chips for attendees and attached files.

Finally, the company has launched additional smart chips or clickable objects that pull relevant information directly into the collaboration canvas. For instance, the new maps smart chip allows you to easily preview a Google Maps link directly in Docs.

While Google Docs was once just a free office software suite designed to compete with Microsoft Office, the introduction of smart canvas, smart chips and other AI-powered tools has made it the preferred online collaboration tool of users around the world.

We’ve also rounded up the best office software

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

February 11, 2022
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It's no secret that Google has an interesting relationship with creating social media and messaging services – often with far less success than its search engines and, mobile operating systems.

Add to the body of evidence the demise of Google Currents, introduced in 2019 as replacement for Google+ as part of the G Suite services, which the company has now announced is coming to an end.

Instead, Google says enterprise customers should use Spaces, which it introduced in 2021 as part of Google Workspace, the replacement for G Suite for Enterprise.

Here today, gone tomorrow

“Since launching Spaces, many customers have told us that they appreciate the tight integration with Google Workspace products, including Gmail, Calendar, Drive, and Meet, and the seamless collaboration experience,” says Google. As such, starting in 2023, Currents will be found down and its services moved over to Spaces.

Anyone impacted – which is surely a fairly small community – will be fully supported by Google in the transition, with Spaces offering many of the same tools as Currents but with tighter integration into other Google apps.

“Upgrading Google Currents to Spaces removes a separate, siloed destination for users, and provides organizations with a modern, enterprise-grade experience that reflects how the world is working today,” the company added.

“Spaces provide a central place for teams to engage in topic-based discussions, share knowledge and ideas, move projects forward, and build communities and team culture.”

Responding to feedback is essential to succeed in the enterprise software space, where IT admins and end-users are the key consistency that must be heard. Creating frictions, or unnecessary faff, will likely spell the end of the product.

>There's an all-new free version of Google Workspace for work

>Google tells free G Suite legacy users it's time to start paying

>Google Workspace is getting a major upgrade to rival Microsoft 365

With Workspace, Google has been challenging in a very crowded field. Seemingly all major companies offer some kind of SaaS tools for businesses, including Meta (formerly Facebook), which offers Workplace and runs its own business on it.

The intense competition means that companies need to move fast and recognise when something isn't working, which Google appears to have done here.

The best cloud storage for businesses around today

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February 4, 2022
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Workers looking to experience a host of the most popular Google Workspace software can now try for free thanks to a new offering from the company.

The new Google Workspace Essentials plan provides access to the likes of Meet, Chat, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides and more as the company looks to offer its online collaboration tools to more businesses than ever before.

What's more, you don't even need a Gmail account to sign up – and it's absolutely free.

Free Google Workspace

“We’re rolling out a new version designed to help people bring the apps they know and love to use in their personal lives to their work life,” Kelly Waldher, Vice President of Marketing, Google Workspace, wrote in a blog post.

“The new Google Workspace Essentials Starter Edition is a no-cost solution for business users looking to enhance teamwork and unlock innovation with secure-by-design collaboration. With Essentials Starter, we’re making it easy for employees to choose their own productivity tools and bring modern collaboration to work.”

There are some caveats to the plan, as users will only get 15GB of cloud storage, down from the usual 30GB available with the basic Google Workspace Business Starter plan, which typically costs $ 6/user/month.

There's also obviously no access to Gmail either, but users will be able to hold Google Meet video conferences of up to 100 people for up to an hour, as well as access to Spaces, Google Chat, Sheets, Slides and Docs.

> Google Workspace is getting a major upgrade to rival Microsoft 365

> Google Workspace Individual offers all you need to start and run a small business

> Google takes aim at Microsoft 365 with small but important update

The news comes as something of a surprise, given Google had recently said it would be cutting down on users accessing Google Workspace for free.

This had upset users who may have recently signed up for the software, particularly non-business users facing having to pay for the first time, with Google saying that anyone not signed up to a paid subscription by the July deadline faced being locked out.

Google plans to automatically upgrade free users from May 1 to “an upgraded Google Workspace paid subscription”, based on its analysis of the customer's usage and the features it thinks you'll need. The company is also offering businesses who don't want to pay or upgrade the chance to export their data at no extra cost.

Here’s our list of the best productivity tools on the market

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

February 3, 2022
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Tracking down that elusive Google Docs or Sheets file could soon get a lot simpler thanks to a new search upgrade.

The company has revealed it is adding a new setting to its search history tool specifically designed to find files created in its Google Workspace office software suite.

The new addition will hopefully be able to track down and display those hard-to-find files directly in your search history, removing a common headache for workers everywhere.

Google My Activity

The change is coming to the Google – My Activity page, which contains all the details of your recent searches across both the web and Google's own apps, such as YouTube.

Going forward, search data from Workspace apps will be contained in a new setting, which will allow users to see suggestions from their own search history.

Past searches can be rerun if necessary, and will cover the likes of Gmail, Google Drive, Calendar, and Currents, along with standalone services such as Google Cloud and Google Sites.

Google says it doesn't utilize any of this data for targeted advertising, and deletes all search history data after 18 months (although this can be reset to delete at 3, 18 or 36 months) and users can amend, expand or restrict the amount of data collected on them at any time.

The new setting will begin rolling out on March 29, and will be set to on by default. Users can disable it by heading to My Activity page > Other Google activity > Google Workspace search history.

> New Google Drive system will stop you losing track of your files

> Most people use Gmail but don't know how full their inbox is

> Google could give free G Suite users a way out of paying for Workspace

The news comes shortly after Google unveiled a new look for Gmail that aims to combine several of the most popular Workspace apps in one window.

The approach looks to provide users with a one-stop shop for all their communication needs – whether via email, video conferencing, or just good old-fashioned instant messaging – without them having to open up extra tabs or windows.

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Via 9to5Google

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Posts tagged "Google"

Migrating your data to Google Workspace is about to get a whole lot easier

Google Workspace Migrate

Google Chrome is killing off its Android Lite Mode

Sunsetting Chrome Lite Mode

Google Chat will officially replace Hangouts within weeks

Farewell Google Hangouts

Xenomorph Malware Burrows into Google Play Users, No Facehugger Required

This Google update will help you free up much-needed space on your Android phone

Files by Google update

Google has released a new font it says makes reading online easier

Fonts glorious fonts

Google Docs will now practically write your documents for you

Interactive building blocks

Google is closing one of its least-loved Workspace apps

Here today, gone tomorrow

There’s an all-new free version of Google Workspace for work

Free Google Workspace

It’ll soon be easier to track down all your lost Google Workspace docs

Google My Activity