On Monday, Alphabet’s Google unveiled an option for the small business to upgrade their Gmail accounts for greater calendaring, video chat and email newsletter functionalities.
The Google Workspace which monthly costs $7.99 (approximately Rs. 590) including a $2 discount, adds to the company’s expansion efforts to have the users subscribe to its other services as YouTube and Google Photos in exchange of more support and feature than available for free.
These subscription sales could help in the growth of Google’s revenue beyond advertising.
The small-business offering compared with the existing plans which were aimed at larger organisations that had their own websites to use in email addresses.
The vice president for Google, Javier Soltero, has told reporters that his unit had been informally saving the photos of business cards and work vehicles mentioning an “@gmail.com” address as a reminder for them for the number of people using their consumer products to run their business.
He mentioned that the ones who upgrade for appointment booking, newsletter production and other tools should be able to provide a more professional experience to their clients.
Workspace Individual to be launched soon in the US, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Australia, and Japan.
On Monday, Google announced the other changes to Workspace as well.
The big businesses would be able to control encryption of their files on the Google Drive for the first time and could prevent Google from unlocking them.
Airbus SE is an early customer.
All the users will now be able to have access to Google Chat; the company’s successor to instant-message program, Google Hangouts.
Soltero said that for the first time in years, “free and the paid users will have access to same services providing a common foundation that makes it simpler to develop new features.”
