Google Chat Rolls Out Cross-Platform Messaging With Microsoft Teams, Slack: How It Works

Google Chat will now allow sending messages to Microsoft Teams and Slack with its new interoperability support. The cross-platform messaging feature was first announced by the tech giant at the Google Cloud Next 2023 event, but so far the feature was available only in beta to a limited number of users. With the new update, all paid subscribers of Google Workspace will be able to send messages to Teams and Slack users. Notably, users and organisations will need to use the Mio app to access the functionality.

The new feature was announced via a Google Workspace update. The company said, “Interoperability will enable organisations that use Google Chat and other messaging platforms within their domain to provide a more seamless experience for their users.” This means users will only be able to use this feature to send messages to people within their own organisation. This could be useful to text coworkers in different teams who use a separate app for communication.

However, there is a caveat. The cross-platform messaging feature is not built into Google Chat. So, users will need to download and install the Mio app to create the interoperability. This will be the tricky part since organisations will need to purchase an additional license in order to use the feature. Despite the extra steps, it can be a useful feature for large organisations that are not exclusively using a single communications platform for all the teams.

Cross-platform messaging feature between Google Chat, Microsoft Teams, and Slack was being tested by the company for the last one year and its availability was limited to some users. Google earlier announced in this year's Cloud Next event that the feature will be rolled out to all paid customers of Workspace, and starting last week, this feature is being rolled out globally.

Separately, Slack released its artificial intelligence (AI) features to all paid users globally. Now, users with a paid subscription of the platform can purchase an add-on to activate features such as recaps, search, and conversation summaries. The company also intends to add note-taking summary generation feature for its voice and video calling feature Huddle.