Doing a little research today into the “Google workspace marketplace” (e.g. Chrome addons for Google Workspace / Groupware). Currently there are 100 addons listed in the category “Works with Gmail” (a bit confusing to mix GSuite and Gmail but whatever), including the kind you’d probably expect, for CRMs, from Zoom, Proofpoint, etc… Probably there are many more not listed for various reasons (extra checks / hoops / fees to pay for being in that category). I notice that the Vereign addon is not listed, for example.
Two takeaways:
- There are not more by now (though the number will surely grow)
- Do end-users realise they are being locked in to at least three different systems?: Chrome, Gmail, and the addon maker (e.g. the CRM)? AFAICs no open standards are involved in the stack at all, meaning when any of the 3 make changes, the user has no power to migrate their data and switch to a service which better suits their needs
- There are so many companies which are happy to build on top of the Google-Chrome walled garden, seemingly permanently giving up control over APIs, customer data privacy, etc. Some of publishers of these apps support other mail clients too (especially Office / Outlook 365). Still I wonder what their boards think of being dependent upon Google’s good graces for the proprietary APIs to continue working, and what their engineers think about sharing their user data, and encouraging users to share their email messages with Google
