With Hangouts finally dead after a long time, you would think that Google has its messaging strategy sorted out. But the company still offers more than one service, with the most prominent ones being Google Chat and Google Messages. While Messages is mostly meant for personal communication, Google Chats wants to be a powerful Slack competitor for your employer or group of friends. The service still has some downsides compared to the competition, and the company seems to recognize that. It has announced a new, easier way to start group chats.

Right now, if you're using Google Chat on the web, you'll specifically need to select the option to "Start group conversation" if you want to start a chat with more than just one person. Compared to competitors, that's an extra step. When you create a new direct message in Slack, you can just keep typing out people you want to add, automatically creating a group chat. Thankfully, Chat's overly complicated workflow is getting shortened to work more like Slack's, as announced by Google on its Workspace blog.

To create a new conversation with multiple people, you can just tap on the New chat button and type out the names of the contacts you want to chat with, like in Slack. Once you're done, click on Start chat (or tap on your Enter key) and get talking with the people you selected. The process for creating spaces is not changing — this change only impacts group conversations, not spaces.

With this change, Google seeks to unify the process of creating both one-on-one and group chats. The new approach can reduce the likelihood of mixing up spaces and group conversations in the creation process, since they were both separate options within the same menu — something that could be confusing for people, as the difference between the two isn't obvious.

If you wish to check it out, the new, revamped workflow is rolling out to all users, personal or not, within the next two weeks.