Google has now officially unveiled its rebrand for G Suite for Education, now dubbed Google Workspace for Education. That’s based on recent reports highlighting the new workspace for students and schools, as well as new features that will be added to the mix.
Not least of all, Google will be adding support for add-ons from third parties. Those will be made available for Google Workspace for Education Plus or Teaching and Learning Upgrade customers, exclusively. But Google will also be more thoroughly integrating Google Classroom and Google Meet.
For Google Classroom, the Android app variant will work offline. Meanwhile, the top-performing video and chat app, Google Meet, is getting a few new features too.
For instance, it will keep students from joining meetings before teachers and integrate with the student roster via Classroom to ensure only those who need access have it. Better muting and call-ending controls are being built in as well, as are emoji reactions — expected to land in August. Finally, transcripts for meetings are launching for both education and enterprise customers later this year.
The two-tier system is mostly intact following these Google Workspace for Education additions
Now, there are still going to effectively be two tiers for the new Google Workspace for Education. And users on the paid, G Suite Enterprise for Education won’t have to do anything to keep their tier. That will be rechristened as Google Workspace for Education Plus. And the free tier will be rebranded as Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals.
Similarly, the features and perks of the paid tier aren’t set to change too much either, with one exception. Now, all users will have to pay for additional storage if they need it.
Specifically, Google is ending its offer for free unlimited storage to institutions that quality. Instead, schools and institutions will have a shared pool of storage. That will be set at 100TB, so not every institution will need to be concerned with running out. But, as of July 2022 — and for new sign-ups in 2022 — storage beyond that will be paid.
So when, exactly, is all of this coming?
Now, the changes detailed here will all roll out in their own timeframe, as indicated above. But Google has not indicated any specific timeline for most of the features. That’s with the exception of Emoji responses and storage policy changes, arriving in August this year and July in 2022.