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.
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
