Key Takeaways
- Google Chat introduces Slack-like instant-on audio meetings called Huddles.
- Easily start a Huddle by clicking the telephone icon in any Google Chat conversation.
- The new Huddles feature is an attempt to catch up to Slack’s similar audio meeting option.
Google Chat gets closer to taking on Slack all the time. Google rolled out custom sections in Chat not too long ago, and now the app is getting instant-on audio meetings, called Huddles.
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The feature eliminates the need for external meeting links and connects all participants immediately to an audio-only environment (via 9to5Google). Huddles are integrated directly into Google Chat. They work across direct messages, group chats, and Spaces.
How to instantly launch a Huddle in Google Chat
Source: 9to5Google
It’s simple to launch a Huddle. Click the telephone icon in the top right of any conversation and choose Start a Huddle from the dropdown. This will instantly launch an audio meeting.
There’s a floating box with audio controls once a Huddle is launched. This box can be resized or moved to different parts of the screen, so you can multitask while listening to the speaker. There’s also the option to launch a video chat or share your screen, thanks to Google Meet working in the background.
The Huddle feature is available to Google Workspace subscribers only, and is not available for personal accounts.
Google Chat is playing catch-up
If this all looks familiar to you, it’s because we’ve seen similar features before. Slack has a similar feature, where users can ‘start a huddle’ in any channel and immediately be launched into an audio session. These are lightweight audio meetings that Slack launched back in 2021.
Then there was a ‘Huddle’ group chat option in Google Plus. Although it didn’t have audio, Google has clearly recycled its name for the new Chat feature.
It has been a long road for Google Chat. The love-child of the old chat in Gmail and Hangouts has been neglected since it was birthed in 2017, but Google has taken a keen interest in it over the past year. Last week, Chat got custom sections, and the app received Google Gemini chats a short while before that.
Huddles is rolling out across Google Workspace tiers, including Business Starter, Enterprise Essentials, and nonprofits. Whether or not this new feature can help Google Chat take on Slack and Microsoft Teams, or if Google will kill the feature like so many other Google products, remains to be seen.