Google Chat Moves to New Web Address, Claims to Load Faster

Google Chat, a messaging and collaboration platform that is part of Google Workspace, is making changes to improve the speed and reliability of its service.

The latest step taken is the launch of a new web address, namely chat.google.com, which is claimed to provide faster load speeds and a smoother experience for users.

Currently, Google Chat is accessed via mail.google.com/chat, a format that technically places Chat as a sub-section of Gmail. By moving it to chat.google.com, Google is bringing this platform in line with the standard URL format of its other core services, such as drive.google.com or photos.google.com. This change effectively gives Google Chat a separate 'home' from Gmail.

Google states that this URL change is designed to reduce load time when opening web applications, so users can get into their conversations faster. Despite the change of address, Google insists that the Chat user interface (UI) will not change, and all bookmarks and links that already exist to the old URL (mail.google.com/chat) will continue to work.

This update is available for all Google Workspace customers as well as users of personal Google accounts. However, there is a note that this seemingly minor change to the address may cause some Google Chat extensions to not work, so users are advised to update their extensions to be compatible with the new URL.

The launch of this new web experience will be carried out gradually and is expected to take more than 15 days to be completely widespread to all users. This step follows the addition of a new message scheduling feature that was also recently launched in Google Chat.