- G Suite is dead, long live Workspace.
You know, my job would be so much easier
if people just stopped changing things,
but then if you didn't change anything,
I wouldn't have as much content to make.
So here we are once again,
and this time it is Google who are the culprits?
Yes, that's right, in typical Google fashion,
actually, more than Microsoft actually,
they have pulled the rug out from underneath
what was formally known as G Suite
which was Google's business plan package, product,
whatever you wanna call it.
And instead they've replaced it with a new name,
Google Workspace.
Now, unlike Microsoft,
they've not only renamed G Suite to Workspace,
but they've also made significant changes to their plans,
which has a dramatic impact on specifically,
storage and pricing.
So for those of you watching this video
off the back of my online storage
or best photo storage comparison videos,
or for those just wondering what Workspace is all about,
then, stick around.
Welcome back to yet another video.
And I guess this is actually going to be
a What The Tech video, because seriously, Google,
what the tech?
A few days ago in October 2020,
Google rebranded the product suite known as G Suite
and launched the new service called Google Workspace.
To keep this video short and to the point,
I'm gonna just cover off what these changes mean
and you can jump straight to each of those sections
following the timestamps below this video.
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Let us continue.
First up, storage.
Why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, Google?
You had a fantastic offering of unlimited storage in G Suite
for a really, really affordable cost.
Admittedly, this was a bit of a hack
since Google's official stance was that you needed
a minimum of five users for unlimited storage,
but from my own experience
and pretty much looking around the web,
it is obvious that Google never enforced this limit.
Well, in Google Workspace, the unlimited storage tier
is no longer an option unless you upgrade
to their Enterprise tiers.
Previously on their Google G Suite business plans,
you had unlimited storage which provides
immense, immense value in comparison
to everything else on the market.
So much so that I most definitely crowned Google
as my favourite online storage provider
for both general just cloud storage
and photo storage videos.
Thanks, Google.
This is most definitely something
that's caused a bit of an uproar amongst the community.
Since the initial announcement actually stated
that existing G Suite subscriptions wouldn't be affected,
well, it now seems that users are being invited individually
to transition, and they'll be likely forced to upgrade
when their annual G Suite renewal comes along.
Now, in terms of your options, you either have 30 gig,
two terabytes or five terabytes of storage per user,
unless you upgrade to their Enterprise tiers
which then obviously means more money,
but you do get that unlimited storage
on those Enterprise tiers.
And in terms of pricing,
well, not much has actually changed here.
G Suite Basic is now called Business Starter,
is £4.60 or $6.
G Suite Business, now called Business Standard,
is £9.20 or $12.
And the higher tier is now called Business Plus,
which is at £13.80 or $18 per user per month.
There are also Enterprise plans,
which pricing isn't actually advertised for,
but they're currently $20 per user per month
or $30 for Enterprise Plus.
And to get those plans, you need to upgrade first
to either the Starter, Standard or Plus tiers,
And then you upgrade within your browser.
You don't actually need to contact Google.
So the questions are,
what's are these new plans and how do they differ
to what was on offer before?
Google States that Workspace introduces
three major developments.
One, a new brand identity.
Two, new ways to get started.
And three, a new deeply integrated user experience.
Number one, a new brand identity.
Well, whoop-de-doo.
They do now have, you know, new style logos
for many of their apps, which does look clean,
but not exactly a reason
to tip this whole service up in the air.
Number two, new ways to get started.
Basically Google's explanation for,
we changed all our packages and now you need to sign up
for one of our new packages.
And then finally, number three,
their new deeply integrated user experience.
And this is where all of the filling is
to that delicious Google sandwich of services.
After reading their blog post all about these changes,
I have to admit, my first thought was,
oh, cool, they're doing all the stuff
that Microsoft's been doing for the last like decade.
Congratulations.
Features like Chat and Rooms
which kind of mirror Microsoft Teams in a way,
where you can message your colleagues
and collaborate on documents together.
One thing that did actually excitement here
was the ability to collaborate with external guests.
Something that Microsoft Teams is notoriously bad for
and requires you to essentially sign out
from your own company's channel
and therefore, miss any notifications that come through
in the meantime.
So this does look like an interesting feature
but I'm also curious to find out how well this works
in real life, because whilst I am an advocate
of getting rid of locally installed apps,
there are some apps that I'd still like to keep separate.
Have you ever been that guy or girl
who has tonnes of tabs open
and then have to click through them all
to find you've missed a notification
from like two hours ago?
Some other arguably minor features of course,
you can now preview a linked file
without opening up in a new tab.
And when you @ mention somebody,
a smart little chip thing pops up with contact details,
so you can email them, chat or video chat them.
You can now also start Google Meet video chats
from within Docs, Sheets, Slides, Gmail, and Chats.
So you don't actually have to leave what you're doing
to go and start a video chat.
And it means you can collaborate on those documents.
And all of these of course are nice feature additions
but I'm still not seeing anything groundbreaking
that really makes sense for the whole rebrand.
Once again, I do feel this is just actually
the standard practise of Google just changing their minds
constantly on their products,
which doesn't really make it easy as a consumer.
And with that said, and according to their own blog post,
these new features are available
to all paying customers of Google Workspace.
So I'm taking that that all of the existing G Suite users
will not get any of these new features
unless they upgrade to one of these new plans.
Oh, dear God, what have they done?
Yet another change to the G Suite/Google Workspace's update
is user numbers.
Previously on G Suite, you could subscribe to any tier
for an unlimited number of users.
In the new Google Workspace,
you are now limited to 300 users on their three lower tiers,
forcing you to upgrade to the Enterprise plans,
but at $20 a pop that is a significant increase
in monthly cost for those with over 300 users.
For example for a company with 301 users
that puts you in at nearly $5,000 extra per month,
if you were previously on the G Suite Business plan.
Yeouch.
Wen looking at Google's own G Suite
to Google Workspace comparison,
things get a little bit more interesting,
or should I say confusing, or should I say more expensive?
All of the above.
For those of you on the G Suite Business plan,
which I'd argue is probably the majority of G Suite users
for that unlimited storage and all the G Suite features,
well, you'll lose the advanced room
and resource management feature
from all three Workspace tiers.
Google Vault is now available
in only the Business Plus tier,
which obviously now costs you more.
With Google Drive, you'll be needing to upgrade
to the Business Plus tier
if you want to completely disabled external sharing
for all your staff, you know, for security purposes.
And lastly, with all of those features that you lose
by switching to Google Workspace,
the one feature, other than the ones
that we've already talked about,
the one feature that you actually get
by upgrading to Google Workspace
that you didn't have before
is that you can now save and record Google Meet meetings
directly to Drive.
Yay?
So after all of this, which let's face it,
seems pretty negative to me, what does this all mean?
Gool has essentially, Gool, Gool.
Google has essentially taken features away from people
unless they upgrade,
paying more to receive those same features back again.
And even then, some aren't included until you upgrade
to the Enterprise tiers
which is a significant increase in price.
But if you just stop right here,
if you forget all of the history here,
put away the emotional breakup
as if Google just swiped left on you
and take a look at the rest of the fish in the sea,
nobody else is really looking that pretty.
If you are looking from the perspective
of wanting the best bang for your buck
when it comes to online storage,
well, Microsoft gives you one terabyte at most.
Dropbox and box.com both offer unlimited storage
but at over double the cost of Google Workspace.
Amazon offer up to 30 terabytes of storage
but at a significant price.
And well, nobody else seems to really come close still.
So it just makes me wonder,
did Google realise and just decide to suddenly become
a lot more profitable?
So after all of this, what does it mean to everybody
who has watched my best online storage video
and the best cloud storage for photos and videos?
Well, for one, Google isn't changing
their Google Photos offering,
that still lets you store unlimited photos and videos
providing they are resized to their standard format
that they use.
More in the video here if you haven't already seen it.
And for me, the Google Workspace tiers
still offer good value,
since it's still the cheapest mainstream provider
offering unlimited storage.
And I say, mainstream provider here
as I keep getting comments on all my other videos that some,
but you didn't look at
unlimiteddatabackupmylaptopservice.com.
Yeah, because I've never heard of it before.
And I wouldn't trust my data to a service
I've never heard of before.
Anyway, I digress, what was I talking about?
For pure storage, then I'd still go with Google,
perhaps rather than just jumping straight in
at the deep end with the unlimited storage,
look at how much data you actually have
and then start with the tier that matches those needs.
Then as your data grows, then you can just upgrade.
Something just worth mentioning here
because I'll get shot down by all the Google people
that watch these videos.
The amount of storage space you get in your Google Drive,
if you are using things like Google Sheets, Google Docs
and any Google format files,
they do not consume space in your Google drive.
I can't imagine Microsoft doing that
with their OneDrive can you?
Word documents, Excel documents, PowerPoint presentations,
Outlook data, all that kind of stuff.
Nah, it's fine.
For those wanting the best all around solution
for their business in terms of applications and features,
and all that kind of stuff,
it's difficult, nigh on impossible to call that
between Office 365 and Google.
Both have their strengths, both have their weaknesses
and both can really make it or break it for your business,
if you don't have a good enough IT support provider
that looks after you, a video which will be coming soon.
And once I've done that, I'll be linking it
in the description below and up there in the cards too.
If you do have any comments or questions,
drop them in the comments below this video.
I do respond to each and every single person
who asks me a question.
If I not covered something, tell me I'm wrong if I'm wrong,
but just be nice about it, please, okay, thank you.
Thanks for watching.
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Thank you, bye-bye.