Google Workspace continues to evolve, offering new tools to streamline collaboration and enhance productivity for businesses of all sizes. Google has announced these updates in detail on their blog, showcasing significant advancements in AI-powered features and adjustments to pricing. Here's a breakdown of what these changes mean for you and your business.
AI Features to Boost Productivity
Google Workspace is embracing AI to make everyday tasks simpler and smarter. Here are some of the standout enhancements:
- Help Me Write in Gmail and Docs: Drafting emails or documents is now quicker than ever. With "Help Me Write," users can generate, refine, or even rephrase content, saving time and ensuring clarity.
- Smart Summaries in Google Meet: Missed a meeting? AI-powered summaries provide concise overviews of key points, so you can catch up without reviewing the entire session.
- AI Insights in Sheets: Leveraging machine learning, Google Sheets now offers advanced data analysis, identifying trends and generating insights automatically.
- Enhanced Security Tools: AI-driven detection mechanisms help identify and mitigate security threats, such as phishing attempts and suspicious account activity.
- Gemini Advanced: Chat with Google’s next-gen AI to research information, brainstorm ideas, and streamline your most demanding projects.
- NotebookLM Plus: Accelerate team knowledge sharing by uploading your sources to get instant insights and podcast-like Audio Overviews. This enhanced version offers notebook customisation, advanced sharing and 5x more Audio Overviews, queries, notebooks, and sources.
These features align with Google’s goal of enabling teams to work smarter, not harder.
How These Changes Impact Your Business
How These Changes Impact Your Business
Cost Considerations
While pricing has increased, the added functionality could reduce the need for additional third-party tools, potentially balancing costs.
Streamlined Collaboration
Enhanced features like Smart Summaries and AI in Sheets make it easier for teams to stay aligned, even across time zones.
Improved Efficiency
With AI taking care of routine tasks, your team can focus on high-impact projects.
Pricing Updates
With these powerful new tools comes a revision to pricing. Google has introduced a new pricing structure to reflect the value of these enhancements. While price changes are never ideal, Google’s continued investment in innovation ensures that your subscription offers more value than ever.
As an example, a customer using the Workspace Business Standard plan with a Gemini Business add-on previously paid $32 per user, per month. Now, that same business would pay just $14 per user, per month — only $2 more than they were paying for Workspace without Gemini.
Here are the new standard prices in GBP, per user/per month.
| Business Starter | Business Standard | Business Plus | Enterprise Standard | Enterprise Plus | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flexible | £7.00 | £ 14.00 | £ 22.00 | £ 27.10 | £ 35.30 |
| Annual/Commit | £ 5.90 | £ 11.80 | £ 18.40 | £ 22.60 | £ 29.50 |
These prices exclude applicable taxes. For alternative currencies, please contact your contact at Ostratto or the pricing can be found on Google's pricing pages.
Your Next Steps
As a Google Workspace partner, we’re committed to helping you maximize the benefits of these updates. Whether it’s navigating the new AI tools or understanding cost implications, we’re here to support you every step of the way.
Google Workspace’s commitment to innovation is evident in its recent AI features, which promise to transform how businesses operate. While the pricing adjustments may require some budgeting considerations, the enhanced functionality and productivity gains are well worth it in our opinion.
If you have any questions or need assistance navigating these updates, we're here to help.
