Google Workspace explained: Google’s answer to Microsoft 365 adds AI
Monday, 31 March 2025 ()
Workspace is Google’s suite of productivity software tools, the main competitor to market leader Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365). Previously known as G Suite, Google Workspace includes well-known apps such as Gmail, Docs, Sheets, and Slides — apps that are also used for free by billions of people globally.
Google has been selling productivity apps to businesses for almost two decades now, having helped pave the way for cloud-based office productivity apps in the 2000s. At a time when most office suites were based on installed desktop software and sold as one-time purchases, Google bundled its popular free web apps with various business services to create a cloud-based office software subscription — a move that would eventually push competitors like Microsoft to adopt a subscription model and develop web versions of their apps.
Google was “very much ahead of the game” at this point and “even 11 or 12 years ago when Office 365 lagged behind what Google was doing with SaaS-based enterprise services,” said Joe Mariano, director analyst and member of Gartner’s Employee Experience Technology team.
The flexibility of Workspace’s cloud-hosted apps was then and continues to be a key draw for business customers, said Mariano: “The proposition is going to a completely SaaS-based set of services,” which allows for “deep interconnectivity” between the various components of the Workspace suite. “Because everything is based in the cloud on the Google Workspace architecture, you see a lot more seamless integration between those services,” he said.
These days, Google’s top priority for Workspace is the integration of generative AI features via its Gemini AI assistant (formerly Duet AI),
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