Google is a household name for internet search. Most people are aware of consumer Gmail. However, many businesspeople are not aware of Google’s suite of applications for business, Google Workspace (formerly G Suite).
“Gone Google” is a term Google coined for companies that have adopted Google Workspace. At the time of publication of this post, Google states that over 5 million companies have gone Google. With over 125 million businesses in the world, there’s clearly some upside for Google.
Google has been steadily increasing market awareness of Google Workspace, but there are still many business owners and executives who do not know that Google Workspace is an established and viable alternative to traditional corporate email, document and collaboration options.
For companies that have gone Google, here are some of the reasons that management decided to make the switch.
1. The company is a startup
Many startups are founded by people who grew up with Gmail. They may have become aware of Google Workspace before starting a business if their school, college or university had adopted Google Workspace for Education.
2. There is a culture of embracing change
Many established companies are resistant to embracing technological change because they tend to be conservative with all their business decisions. For companies that embrace change more readily, Google Workspace is often considered as an alternative to the status quo.
3. Owners and/or executives are cloud-minded
Often, a decision to go with Google Workspace parallels decisions to go with cloud applications in other functional areas, such as CRM, accounting, time billing and HR.
4. IT resources are scarce to non-existent
For companies that operate virtually or that operate within offices but have no staff IT personnel, even supporting desktop email clients can be an unnecessary burden. While Google’s business email can work with desktop clients, many people chose to use the browser interface.
5. The IT department has bigger fish to fry than email server maintenance and desktop email client support
Even for organizations that have multiple IT staff members, the company may be better served if the IT team focuses on projects such as systems integration instead of maintaining in-house email servers and troubleshooting desktop software.
In fact, more and more businesses are looking at Chromebooks as a much lower maintenance alternative to PCs.
6. Employees are requesting more efficient ways to collaborate
Many businesspeople have developed the habit of emailing documents, spreadsheets and presentations around for review and comments. They’re comfortable doing this and aren’t necessarily asking themselves if there’s a more efficient way.
Those who question whether there’s a more efficient way to collaborate may see Google Apps for Work as an option.
They may have seen business use cases for Google Hangouts and be interested in that form of collaboration.
7. Business owners and/or executives trust Google’s reliability and redundancy
People at companies that go Google trust that Google has built-in data redundancy within its infrastructure.
8. They trust Google’s data security
Many people are aware of Google Workspace, but have a distrust of keeping their data in the cloud.
But what’s more vulnerable, the data behind a small company firewall that gets occasional security patches or a global network of data centers with over 700 engineers dedicated to security?
Would Sony Pictures Entertainment have been better off with email data in Google’s data centers than on their local network?
9. They trust Google’s commitment to privacy
They trust the fact that Google is not going to roll over and hand over their data to the first government agency that asks for it.
Unless you’ve done something to make you worry about the feds marching into your office and seizing your computers, you probably don’t need to worry about Google giving your data to anyone.