- Google Chat makes latest move to challenge Microsoft Teams
- Admins can now migrate Microsoft Teams channels data to Chat
- Customization, including date ranges, is supported
Google is taking its battle for supremacy in the online collaboration space to a new level with the public launch of a tool designed to take users away from one of its biggest competitors.
The company has officially released a new service making it easier to migrate Microsoft Teams conversations into its own Chat service.
First announced in December 2024, the migration tool is now generally available to all Google Chat users, with the company hoping businesses can deploy the platform more easily by experiencing less downtime and friction during the transition.
Goodbye Microsoft Teams?
“We’re expanding our data migration experience to include the ability for Google Workspace admins to migrate conversations from channels in Microsoft Teams to spaces in Google Chat,” the company had initally noted in a Google Workspace update blog post announcing the news.
Within the ‘Chat migration’ menu of Google Chat, admins can connect to opposing Microsoft accounts to import Teams data. Migration maps and identity maps can be uploaded as csv files, and admins will also have the option to enter the start date for messages to be migrated from.
“You can also run a delta migration, which will migrate any messages added to Teams channels since the primary migration. Messages that are already successfully migrated are skipped,” Google added.
Admins can also produce reports based on completed migrations to identify content that skipped, failed or had warnings.
Moreover, the feature requires those taking the action to be Google super admins and Microsoft Teams Global Administrators.
Any customers still needing to use the two platforms (and/or others) should consider enabling Mio, a third-party service which Google announced its interoperability with, alongside Teams and Zoom, back in 2024.
The news comes at a slightly tricky time for Microsoft Teams, as the company continues its battle with EU regulators concerning potential antitrust issues.
The latest salvo from lawmakers could in fact see the price of Microsoft Office (including Teams) subscriptions rise significantly, despite unbundling Teams from its software in 2024.