The default away statuses are "commuting," "out sick," and "vacationing," which are all things you'd tell your co-workers but not your friends. It would be nice if the company rounded off some of the sharper enterprise corners that don't feel like they belong in a consumer app. Neither of the paid features seem particularly great, but they do show that Google has the capability to show different UIs for enterprise users and everyday consumers. Paid accounts also get you access to bots, which plug into other services just like Slack. Every new message is a new topic chat, and each major chat has individual "reply" text input boxes. Paid users get access to "threaded rooms," which sort of work like a forum. Google has opened up enterprise chat to regular consumers, but one or two features are paywalled behind organizational Google Workspace accounts. Slack lets you join multiple workspaces, so each department in a large organization can have a Slack with its own settings, and users can join multiple workspaces. Slack lets you build a workplace culture with custom emojis, while Google Chat is just stuck with the measly 3,500 Unicode emojis. Slack has 18 different themes and a customizable theme system where you can enter various hex codes for UI elements, while Google Chat doesn't even have a single canned dark mode. Google Chat doesn't support watching keywords and being notified, or channel topics, or custom avatars. Slack has a dual-panel UI mode, which puts your current chat on the left and any special list you want on the right-hand side (which is my preferred way to use the app-you can always see if someone new wanted your attention). Slack gives you special lists that are mandatory for keeping track of things at a busy company: a list of all your and keyword mentions, a list of all your DMs, a list of all unread chats, or the running replies for a thread. Enterprise chat is, above all else, a way for other people to get hold of you, and Slack has a myriad of mention and notification UI bells and whistles that have no analog in Google Chat. ![]() When it comes to competing with Slack, Google Chat is not even close. ![]() The irony of Google chat being "enterprise-first" is that it's actually far closer to being a viable consumer chat app than it is an enterprise chat app. The big difference is that the Room UI is completely terrible due to not showing previews and living in a different part of the UI, while the group chat UI is just the normal chat UI. Rooms keep a running list of files and tasks, and group chats don't. Rooms can have custom names, and group chats can't. What's the difference between a group chat and a room? From a consumer perspective, almost nothing. regular group chats? So, confusingly, two different group chats exist: Rooms and group chats. If you want to blow up your existing group chats and start again, though, there are group-chat options besides Rooms. Unfortunately, Google Hangouts users will have their important, named chats transitioned to a Google Chat Room. I don't want to use Rooms only because the Room UI is so bad. Not being able to see the last message from the chat list makes conversations harder to keep up with, and having to look in two places when the UI dings-the room list and the 1-to-1 chat list-is frustrating and confusing. Rooms showing less information on the chat list and being locked off in a different part of the UI makes the Room chatting experience a lot worse than 1-to-1 chats. ![]() You don't even have to open the chat! On the other hand, Rooms get a completely inferior listing in the UI with only one line of info (the name of the room) in the listing. It's incredibly helpful to see the last message, especially if it's something short like a one-word reply. This is the standard messaging interface for a reason. In both interfaces, 1-to-1 chats get a great listing in the UI, with a profile picture and two lines of info (line 1 has the person's name, and line 2 shows the last message in the chat). On the web, Room chats live in a separate list, below the list of 1-to-1 chats. On mobile, it's an entirely separate tab and you can never see 1-to-1 chats and Room chats at the same time. Chats with one person are considered a different thing from chats with two or more people, and you can never see them all in the same place. The biggest annoyance about Google Chat is that it quarantines "Rooms," or group chats, off into a separate part of the UI. Enlarge / The chat list (left) gives you way more info than the room list (right).
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