Dive Brief:

• Google announced Springboard, a new digital assistant designed to serve as a search engine for the enterprise. 

• Google Springboard searches for information within all of a company’s Google apps, including Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Drive, Contacts and more.

• The company also announced an update to Google Sites to make it easier for employees to share information within an organization. Now, when designing things like quarterly reports or newsletters, users can employ drag-and-drop editing and real-time collaboration.

Dive Insight:

Google knows enterprises can improve productivity if employees can find the information they need easier and faster, so Springboard is designed to do just that. 

Highlighting its nearly 15 years of experience with enterprise search, Springboard acts as a successor to the sunset Google Search Appliance. Now, rather than containing the enterprise search engine in a bright yellow box, Google is working to bring technologies such as machine learning to create a more fluid cross-application search that could help save users time. 

"The average knowledge worker spends the equivalent of one full day a week searching for and gathering information," said Prabhakar Raghavan, vice president of Engineering for Google Apps.

Google is currently previewing Google Springboard and the new Google Sites with select customers, and has extended an invitation for other customers to test them.