Google Enterprise is now Google for Work: The rise of the personal

I had an opportunity to meet with some Googlers this week, and we talked about the renaming of Google Enterprise to Google for Work, which was announced Tuesday, in a post written by Eric Schmidt, Google’s chairman.

When I heard about the change, I immediately saw it as a reorganization of the point-of-view. Enterprises do business, but people do work. This is a dramatic shift away from a corporate, managerial positioning of the tools, to a personal, individual position. They are saying that Google is building these tools for us, the workforce, so we can get our work done, so we can connect with others, and we can achieve our goals.

They are moving into a discourse about our personal involvement with tools, and through them with each other.

This is turning out to be the week of the personal, what with this rebranding and the unveiling of Apple Watch. Tim Cook said ‘Apple Watch is the most personal device Apple has ever created’. 

Our attachment to tools and devices is personal: we use them every day. We live in contact with them. Jony Ive observed that the Apple Watch is touching you, touching your skin, sensing your pulse. You can’t get more personal than that. Although the tools we use shape our minds and culture, even if we aren’t physically touching them. That is just as personal.

The Googlers — from the Google for Work Team — agreed with my take. It will be interesting to see how this shifts the the contours of the tools themselves, but changing the thinking about who the products are for — living, breathing people, not an amorphous enterprise —  and what needs they have is a first step in that department, too.

Relevant Analyst
Stowe Boyd

Stowe Boyd

Lead analyst Gigaom Research

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