Google has made an interesting announcement regarding its plan to change the design of its suite of office apps! Now the G Suite apps – Gmail, Chat, Docs, Sheets, Meet, and Calendar – are getting merged and rebranded as Google Workspace.

Apart from getting rebranded, these apps are getting new features designed to make them firmly integrated with one another. Google is also going to change up the pricing plan and add a new “business plus” which would have several devices and management features.

For example, a chat window can now spawn a new document and be used by everybody on a group without having to open another tab. Google Docs is different as well because you can now instantly start a video call with any member active on the document.

Now the idea to merge Gmail and all the apps isn’t new – Microsoft has self-admittedly been trying to design the same thing with its Fluid framework in Office. By making these changes, Google is now challenging Microsoft Office!

When you press the release quote from the Vice President in charge of Google Workspace, you get this explicit response: “This is the end of the ‘office’ as we know it.”

After taking the initial steps towards the great mergers, Google is hoping to attract more users by creating further conveniences. Of course, not everything’s going to be fitted into one tab; that could be extremely suffocating and terribly chaotic. Hence, only the elements of the Google Workspace that you choose to use will be surfaced on top for you.

You’ll actually be able to view a sample of this kind of integration from today onwards. Google Workspace apps will allow users to add small previews of their documents the way they like. In addition, Google is expanding the use of “smart chips” so you can use them as contact cards and mention anyone using the “@” options.

Slightly more ambitious features will be launching in the coming weeks. The non-business customers can get accustomed to these changes too, but only after business users are entertained first.

However, it is essential to address that these changes are desktop-centric and so they’re focused on Google apps fitted on browsers like Chrome and others. Furthermore, the Gmail icon is getting painted differently – the all red letters will now be multicolored!

The VP has suggested that Google will not be reducing the support of the third-party apps in the Google Workspace. You can say that these changes are a bit of a statement as Google prepares itself to solidify its competition with The Office!