Google Chat is the search giant’s messaging app for its Google Workspace productivity suite. It is kind of like Google’s version of Slack, which helps facilitate communication between coworkers and colleagues while also allowing users to send personal messages too. In this regard, we can today bring you the news that will lean more toward those more personal messages, but that may end up creeping into work messages too, even if they are not appropriate. Google Chat is getting custom emojis.
Google is giving Chat users the ability to create and send their own customized emojis. Users will be able to send these to both personal and professional colleagues, although we would advise restraint before you go sending anything too outlandish to your coworkers.
In the Google Workspace blog post announcing the move, the Google Chat team announced that it is launching this new feature, which was announced at Google Cloud Next ’22 because:
“Emojis are a great way for people to express themselves in Google Chat.”
Adding that they are:
“Excited to announce that we’re making emojis even more expressive and personalized by allowing people to create custom emojis.”
The new custom emoji feature will be available to all users in organizations that are using Google Chat, although admins will be able to set organizational guidelines and even set special “emoji managers” who can moderate all custom emojis and even delete those that do not adhere to the organization’s guidelines.
Google Chat’s custom emojis will start rolling out on October 24 and will see availability being staggered up until November 30. It will become available for Google Workspace customers as well as legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers. It will not be launching for personal Google Accounts.
In other Google Chat news, the search giant is taking extra care to protect Chat users from phishing attacks.
