Dropbox teams up with Google to bring G Suite into its platform
Less than a week after its long-rumored plan to go public was confirmed, Dropbox Inc. this morning announced a landmark partnership with Google LLC to integrate their respective productivity services.
The collaboration is set to see the companies build out features to let users keep G Suite documents in the cloud storage provider’s platform. Workers will gain the ability to not only view such files and make them accessible to colleagues, but also edit content with the appropriate Google application.
The planned integration is set to cover all three of G Suite’s core services: Docs, Sheets and Slides. At the same time, the capability won’t be limited to files based on the native formats of Google’s productivity tools. Dropbox will also allow workers to use G Suite applications with other compatible documents such as those created in Microsoft Corp.’s rival Office 365.
Rounding out the list of planned features is a pair of plugins. The first will enable workers to generate a sharable link to a Dropbox asset directly from the Gmail interface, as well as check the date of the last edit to the document and other metadata. The other extension will make it possible to access files from within Google’s newly launched Hangouts Chat team messaging service.
The collaboration with the search giant should enable Dropbox to address the requirements of enterprise customers that rely on G Suite much more effectively. Billy Blau, the company’s head of technology partnerships, told VentureBeat that over half of the teams using Dropbox for Business rely on Google’s productivity tools.
The new alliance is made even more significant by the fact that rival Box Inc. already offers integration with G Suite. By partnering with Google, Dropbox is poised to level the playing field.
For the search giant, in turn, the partnership provides an opportunity to attract new customers who might otherwise not consider G Suite. Dropbox revealed to have a hefty 500 million registered users in the paperwork for its upcoming initial public offering.
Image: Dropbox
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