Last year Google announced that they were working on a new way to bring the power of a machine intelligence-powered search engine to the enterprise. They called it Google Springboard and today have announced that through the power of Google Springboard (now called Google Cloud Search) they are bringing “the power of Google Search to G Suite customers”.
More and more companies are moving their data and workloads tot he cloud. Google aims to ease the workload on employees to prevent wasting a lot of time in the process of finding information that they need to do their job. Google cloud search not only provides a comprehensive search of data but also proactive recommendations to the help the user throughout the day. It does this with the use of Assist cards.
Assist cards appear to be similar to Google Now cards where they provide relevant and timely information to help you navigate through your day. As with most, if not all, machine learning, the more you use it the more useful it becomes.
With Google Cloud Search the employee (and employer) can not only search through the company’s data but also people listed in the company’s directory. The result will show the person’s contact details as well as any events or files you may have in common with them.
Sounds like a nightmare for privacy but Google Cloud Search respects G Suite’s file sharing permissions so if you do not have access to a certain file you will not be able to see it in search results.
Cloud Search will begin rolling out globally for all G Suite Business and Enterprise edition customers today. In the future Google are looking to add third-party integration to Cloud Search to further expand it’s capabilities.
Will you or your workplace have a use for this? Do you see any issues with privacy? Are we starting to rely on AI and machine learning too much?
I wonder when that’ll roll over to G Suite for Education.