Google Chat is just now getting a feature Teams and Slack have had for years

Google Chat is finally getting message forwarding. Starting this week, Chat users will see a new “Forward message” option in message action lists. Google’s also built in some clever protections to make sure you don’t accidentally share info with the wrong people.

In a blog post this week, Google outlined the new option. It appears when you click the three dots that appear when you click individual messages, just above the option to copy a link to that message.

Chat’s sharing feature is cleverly designed to stop users from accidentally sharing information between organizations. Google says you’re not able to share messages from internal chats with chats containing users outside your organization; you also can’t share messages between two chats that both include users outside your organization. But you can share messages from chats that include external users to your internal team chats.

Google’s announcement says the update does away with the need for clunky workarounds like sharing screenshots of chats. Message forwarding is a pretty common need in work chats; competitors like Slack and Microsoft Teams have supported the feature for years.