Dropbox Inc. officially launched the much-touted G Suite integration today at Google LLC’s Cloud Next conference, a connection it has been working on in collaboration with the search giant for the past year.

The companies struck a partnership last March to link their productivity platforms with one another in order to provide a better experience for joint users. The move came as something of a surprise at the time since Dropbox’s cloud storage platform directly competes with G Suite. With Dropbox having 13 million paying customers and G Suite boasting 4 million, the companies apparently found enough overlap in their install bases to put that rivalry aside.

The new integration is aimed at bringing the best of both ecosystems together in a single interface. Workers can now launch G Suite’s Docs, Sheets and Slides applications directly in Dropbox to create new documents, as well as edit existing files originally created with other tools such as Microsoft Word.

The platform treats G Suite documents the same as any other file type. If a worker moves a report created in Docs to a shared team folder, it will automatically show up for colleagues without requiring any special action. G Suite documents also appear in searches, enabling users not only to view the title of files when looking up keywords but also sift through their contents.

Another part of Dropbox that integrates with the productivity suite is its notification system. The platform’s desktop and mobile apps now alert users when a colleague comments on one of their Docs, Sheets or Slides documents, removing the need to have multiple tabs open. In the mobile client, workers can also preview files before opening on them, as well as download them locally to enable offline access.

The new integration is one of three that Dropbox and Google have set out to implement as part of their partnership. They’ve also built a Gmail extension to let workers access files in the inbox window, while a third, yet-unreleased integration with Google’s Hangouts Chat team messaging service will allow joint customers to send file links to colleagues more easily.

The search giant isn’t the first competitor with which Dropbox has partnered. The cloud storage giant provides extensive integrations with Microsoft Corp.’s Office 365, including an Outlook extension similar to the one in Gmail and a connector for sharing files via the Microsoft Teams team messaging service.

Dropbox Business users can access the G Suite integration today in the public beta.

Image: Dropbox