Let’s review some recent news about Google Workspace. Why a price adjustment, when does it take effect, and who does it apply to?
Google announces price changes between flexible and annual plans
Google has announced in this article that the prices of Google Workspace will increase starting from April 2023. Let’s clarify what these changes consist of and which customers are affected by the price increase.
These changes reflect the innovation that Google has continued to offer through its products. Over 300 new features have been released in 2022 alone, including:
- new Meet and Chat features that help hybrid workers connect, create documents, and collaborate from anywhere;
- new features in Google Docs, Slides, and Sheets that assist individuals and teams in achieving better results;
- new integrated data and threat protection features based on artificial intelligence, including automated classification and trust rules in Drive, and phishing and malware protections in Calendar and Drive.
The price adjustments aim to reflect the value of the products and offer customers a wider choice in terms of subscriptions and commitment options. Let’s see what is changing.
Google is introducing an Annual Plan option for all available editions, as already done by other competitors. Annual plans are suitable for organizations ready to engage in a long-term agreement, ensuring the lowest price per user.
As a result, the price of flexible subscriptions will increase. Flexible plans offer customers the ability to pay based on usage, without commitment, and allow them to add or remove accounts at any time, providing greater flexibility for businesses with varying workforce sizes.
Another change is related to aligning with exchange rates compared to the US dollar. The goal is to align the prices of Google Workspace services across geographic areas, resulting in adjustments to subscription prices in various currencies, including the euro.
The new prices have already been officially published on the Google Workspace website and will be applied to new subscriptions starting from April 2023. For existing subscriptions, the variation depends on factors such as the type of plan, the number of users, or any applied discounts. Additionally, customers who currently have a commitment or annual subscription ending after April 2023 will be affected by these changes only at its natural expiration.
As a Google Cloud Partner, we are available to our customers for further information.
New design for Drive, Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides
Google has announced a simplification of the interface for many of its apps. The new Material Design 3 UI, adopted by Docs, Sheets, and Slides, streamlines the interface of commands, allowing us to quickly find the most used functions and improves the user experience, especially in comments.
In Drive, we can also notice graphical changes in the key actions displayed at the top and the ability to select multiple files to perform actions on the selected group of files. Additionally, file search is enhanced with new possibilities, such as searching by owner, type, or last file modification.
Google Tasks replaces Reminders
While Google Tasks has been part of Gmail and Calendar apps since 2008, it became a standalone product in 2018 and was included among the Core services of G Suite, now Google Workspace.
However, there was a coexistence of multiple tools capable of fulfilling similar tasks, namely Google Tasks and Reminders. Google’s decision is mentioned in this announcement: in the coming months, the Reminders tool will be migrated to Google Tasks to create a unified experience for managing to-do lists on Google.
Users will be able to create tasks from both Calendar and Google Assistant, just as they could with Reminders. Furthermore, tasks can also be created from other Google Workspace apps, such as Gmail, Docs, and Chat.
For Google Workspace customers with the Tasks service ACTIVE in their organization, users can voluntarily migrate starting from April 12, 2023. As for users with personal accounts, this migration request will be displayed starting from March 6, 2023.
Do you want more information and use cases for using Google Tasks? Consult the dedicated section on the Google Support
Sara Fiorelli
Marketing & Customer Relationship @Wondersys Srl
