Good golly, gang, Google's done it again.

Just when I thought the G-team had made its messaging service strategy as convoluted as humanly possible, Le Googlé has managed to inject even more messy confusion into its suite of messaging products.

This, my fellow earthlings, deserves some serious recognition. Achieving levels of perplexity this high is a rare feat, and you'd better believe it ain't easy.

Our latest confounding twist comes courtesy of an announcement earlier this week that Google Workspace — the recently rebranded identity for the entity formerly known as G Suite — will now be available for everyone, whether you're using a paid company-connected account or a free individual Google account.

With that announcement comes a host of incoming changes to the communication services you know and love and even some changes to the core Gmail interface. It's a lot to wrap your head around, and my own Gmail inbox has been overflowing with questions from bemused and befuddled Google users.

In an effort to answer those inquiries and make sense of Google's increasingly comical messaging service situation, I thought we'd think through some questions together — questions that'll help us get to the bottom of what's actually going on with all of this and what it really, truly means for us as humble Google-using hominids.

So sharpen your fingernails and prepare for some intensive head-scratching: It's time to get inquisitive.

Excellent question, Mr. Watson! Best I can tell, Google Workspace is now the name for all of Google's productivity apps — Gmail, Docs, Sheets, and so on. With this week's announcement, that name now applies to anyone using said services, whether you're a paying business customer or just a regular ol' individual-account-owning schmo.

Basically, all the Workspace features that bring different messaging and collaborating opportunities into Gmail — the stuff we heard about last fall for paying Workspace account owners — are now gonna be available to anyone who's using Gmail, whether on a paid or a free basis.

Here is a screenshot to illustrate what's on its way to an inbox near you:

Mine does, too. But that isn't a question.

What you're seeing in that screenshot is a conversation in the Google Chat group messaging system, which used to be called Rooms but is now getting renamed to Spaces, in which multiple people are talking about a spreadsheet from Google Sheets and then working on said spreadsheet right there in the Gmail inbox.

Again, not a question.

Google Chat is the new-ish messaging system connected to Google Workspace. It had previously been available only to paying Workspace customers, but starting now, everyone will be able to use it.

Not exactly. Back in the olden days, Gmail had a Google messaging service known as Google Talk. But lots of folks referred to that service as Google Chat — or GChat — even though that wasn't technically its name.

Most individual Gmail users are still using Google Hangouts, which is the universal messaging service that debuted in 2013 and was meant to simplify Google's messaging strategy. It launched with the promise that it'd become the "the single communication app" all Google users would rely on.

Hangouts has been in the process of being phased out for approximately 7,492 years now. Google says it'll be shut down eventually, once all of its users have successfully moved over to Google Chat instead.

Nope. It's just for messaging with other people who are also using Google Chat. For SMS-based texting, you'll want to use the Google Messages service.

Yes — yes, it does.

Chat is the brand name for the next-gen messaging option available in Google Messages, which relies on the Rich Communication Services, or RCS, standard. It lets you chat with other Google Messages users who have Chat enabled and enjoy a modern-messaging-app-like experience, with active typing indicators, read receipts, end-to-end encryption, and other such niceties.

Correct-o!

Hangouts Chat was what Google originally called the Google Chat service (the standalone service that's getting integrated into Gmail, not the RCS messaging feature within the Google Messages app) when it first launched in 2017.

Yes — yes, it was.

That sensible-seeming setup clearly wasn't confusing enough, so Google changed its mind at some point and turned Chat into an all-purpose, available-to-everyone sort of tool.

You use Google Chat on days with odd numbers of letters in their names and use Google Messages on days when the nearest visible grass has grown to a length that's between 1.4 inches and 7.62 centimeters.

Spaces is the new name for Rooms, which is the group messaging feature available within the Google Chat system (which, remember, is now available to everyone within Gmail).

Because Google wants to make sure no one ever fully understands its messaging service strategy and which product is being used at which time.

Indeed, there was! What a memory you have in that disturbingly moist brain of yours. Google Spaces was an app introduced in 2016 that was supposed to simplify group sharing. It let you create Spaces (get it?) with other people and then share messages, links, videos, and angry koala photos and view all that stuff right then and there in that one interface.

It was killed less than a year after it launched. Charges are still pending.

Yup — Google Meet, which is Google's group video conferencing service. It'll be available in the Gmail website sidebar as well.

It was! But now it's meant for anyone and everyone to use.

Well, Google Duo lets you have calls either one on one or with as many as 32 people. Google Meet lets you have calls either one on one or with as many as 100, 150, or 250 people, depending on your Google Workspace plan, and it has some extra presentation-related and work-oriented conferencing options. Google Meet is also more fun to say, because people never know if you're talking about a video conferencing service or some strange new beef product.

Yes.

Yeah — with the new Workspace setup, you can open documents, spreadsheets, and presentations right within Gmail when someone shares one of those with you in a group chat Room (soon to be known as a Space).

Right-o.

The encounter could create a time paradox, the results of which could cause a chain reaction that would unravel the very fabric of the space time continuum and destroy the entire universe.

Google Voice is a Workspace-related service that acts as a virtual switchboard for your phone number so that you can make and receive both calls and messages on any number of devices.

It doesn't, exactly. It's just its own separate thing.

You can! Google Chat has nothing to do with your phone number, so the two services are totally unrelated.

No, Google Voice doesn't support the RCS-based Chat system as of now.

Yes.

No. Businesses and schools can opt to use a paid Workspace setup, but for regular folk with standard individual Google accounts, everything's still free — like always.

Well, I should probably also mention that Google's now offering a new paid Workspace Individual option for anyone who has an individual Google account but wants to use the business-level Workspace features.

According to Google's announcement, they will let anyone with a small business "get more done, show up more professionally, and better serve their customers."

Sure! Google also says the Workspace Individual plan will let subscribers "easily manage all their personal and professional commitments from one place with access to Google support to get the most out of their solution."

Oh, and it gives you a neat Calendly-like scheduling feature.

Yes.

No, silly. The Google Chat integration in Gmail will show up only if you go into the Gmail settings on the website, click the "Chat and Meet" tab, and change the "Chat" setting from "Classic Hangouts" to "Google Chat."

Any messages sent after June of 2020 will show up there automatically. Any messages sent before June of 2020 will appear there at some unspecified future date. Until then, they'll presumably exist in a virtual vortex that's closely guarded by a robot named Keanu.

No, you can only talk to other people who have Google Chat enabled and/or installed on their various devices.

The number will vary based on how many Google employees you communicate with on a daily basis, but for most average users, I suspect the number is presently somewhere between zero and two.

Yes! If you switch over to Google Chat, using the setting we mentioned a second ago, you'll be able to open up documents, spreadsheets, and presentations anytime someone shares one into a Google Chat Room.

No, the change from Rooms to Spaces won't happen until sometime "this summer."

Extraordinarily high.

You can! Just make sure the option for "Chat" in the "Chat and Meet" section of the Gmail website's settings is set to "Off" and make sure the option for "Meet" in that same section is set to "Hide the Meet section in the main menu."

You can! In the Gmail Android app, just tap the three-line menu icon in the upper-left corner, find and select "Settings" from the menu that comes up, then tap the name of the Google account you want to adjust. Uncheck the box next to "Chat," say "Expelliarmus!" for good measure, and that entire bar should disappear.

There is no difference.

You could, yes, but that's a fine way to lose a friend.

It was merely a figment of your imagination. Google Allo never actually existed.

If only, my friend. If only.

Sign up for my weekly newsletter to get practical tips, personal recommendations, and brutally honest insight on all things Google.