Google the busy bee
Like or not, Google has been busy in recent days – particularly with Google+ – in an ever increasing effort to drive users to its own services and pull them away from competitor products like Skype and Facebook.
Let’s have a look at what they’ve been up to.
An update to Google Hangouts sees a new collapsible sidebar (that includes invites, chat and customizable apps) as well as colourful notifications – increasing overall convenience, visibility and aesthetic appeal.
Growing in popularity, Google Drive has also had a minor, but relevant, addition to its range of functionalities. You can now share links directly from your Drive to Google+ and people in your circles will be able to sift through your files.
Their activity doesn’t stop there, with multiple products receiving attention lately: Google Search for iOS now features voice recognition in a direct challenge to Apple’s Siri, Gmail’s compose received a tidy pop-up revamp and Google Play Music is set to launch in Europe (essentially an online music cloud service – where you can upload and stream your own songs).
While it can be, and is continually, argued that Google+ has firmly moved into a focus on enterprise, I’d have to disagree with that now. Don’t get me wrong – I believe there was and still is a focus on enterprise, but it’s something that’s now shifting as users will find that their apps and products will be so easy to use and centralized that they’ll migrate over; convenience (with quality) always wins.
