Gemini for business: Workspace, Gemini Enterprise and Gemini Notebook (2026 guide)

In Google Workspace, Gemini lets an employee ask for a summary of their unread email, a first draft of a document built from three Drive files, or an analysis of a Sheets table, without leaving the tool they are working in. Gemini Notebook, formerly NotebookLM, answers only from the documents you give it, with citations.

Under the “Gemini” name, Google sells two distinct offerings through two divisions, and the choice between them depends on the data involved.

A document imported into Gemini Notebook escapes Workspace data regions; an agent that must read Salesforce or Microsoft 365 belongs to Gemini Enterprise. Facts checked against Google’s documentation on October 14, 2026.

Key takeaways in six points

• If you already pay for Google Workspace Business Standard or a higher plan, Gemini is already included, with nothing more to buy. To check your plan, open the admin console, Billing section, or ask your administrator. To get started without reading the technical parts, go straight to the practical section.
• Business Starter, at €6.80 excluding tax per user per month, only includes Gemini in Gmail and Vids; Business Standard, at €13.60 excluding tax, adds it to Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drive and Meet. Business plans stop at 300 users; beyond that, Workspace Enterprise is quote-based.
• Gemini Enterprise is a separate offering, sold by Google Cloud from $21 per license per month. It is built for agents connected to Microsoft 365, Salesforce or Jira.
• Google does not train its models on your business content without your permission, and says so in its contractual terms.
• Gemini Notebook is the exception to watch: in Workspace, data regions do not apply to it, nor, according to Google’s privacy hub, does DLP, data loss prevention.
• Gems are going away in favor of skills, on March 1, 2027 at the earliest for businesses.

The names: two offerings, one shared tool, one agent

“Gemini” covers two paid offerings, one tool present in both, and an agent:

• Google Workspace with Gemini: Google’s office suite, Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drive, Meet, with Gemini built into each app plus the Gemini app on the web and mobile.
• Gemini Enterprise: Google Cloud’s offering for building, sharing and running agents, assistants that chain actions across several tools. It took over Google Agentspace, its former name, in October 2025.
• Gemini Notebook: the research tool called NotebookLM until July 16, 2026, present in Workspace and, as an Enterprise version, in Gemini Enterprise.
• The Gemini agent: the Gemini Enterprise product page, viewed October 14, 2026, now presents the offering as a universal agent that works across your email, documents, data and applications. It is not a separate offering. Several of its features are in early access, reserved for some customers before general release.

The consumer Gemini app, used with a personal account, belongs to none of these offerings. That matters for data, just as with ChatGPT or Claude.

Plans and pricing: Workspace and Gemini Enterprise

Workspace

Taken on October 14, 2026 from the French Workspace pricing page, price per user per month on an annual commitment:

	Business Starter	Business Standard	Business Plus	Enterprise
Listed price	€6.80	€13.60	€21.10	Quote
Gemini in apps	Gmail and Vids	Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drive, Meet, Chat	Same	Same
Gemini app	Basic access	Expanded access	Expanded access	Expanded access
Gemini Notebook	Basic access, 3 audio overviews per day	Expanded access, 20 per day	Same	Same
Vault	No	No	Yes	Yes
Data regions	No	Storage	Storage	Storage, and processing in Enterprise Plus
Users	300 max	300 max	300 max	No limit

A few terms from the table. Vids is Workspace’s video editing tool. An audio overview is a conversation generated between two synthetic voices from your documents.

Vault is the archiving tool used to retain, search and export employee data for legal purposes. Data regions set the area, United States or Europe, where content is stored, and in some editions processed.

The page states that prices do not include taxes: these are prices excluding tax. Google advertises a 16% saving with the annual commitment compared with monthly billing.

The page also shows a temporary discount of 20 to 30% depending on the plan for the first three months, from October 28, 2026 to January 28, 2027 for a sign-up on October 14, after the 14-day trial. Its conditions reserve it for new customers; this guide’s calculations use the reference prices.

Workspace Studio, the tool that automates a task as a series of steps handed to Gemini, is in every plan, as are the skills described below.

Gemini Enterprise

Gemini Enterprise is sold separately, by Google Cloud. Its editions, according to the official comparison updated October 14, 2026 and Google’s FAQ:

Edition	For whom	Price
Business	Small teams, no IT setup	From $21 per license per month, listed price with no mention of taxes
Standard and Plus	Security and compliance requirements: data residency, encryption keys, audit logs, third-party agents	Not published, quote-based
Pay-as-you-go	At least one license, monthly Google Cloud billing	Usage-based
Frontline	Frontline workers, as an add-on to Standard or Plus	Not published

Google gives two different sizes for the Business edition: the editions comparison says 1 to 500 users, the FAQ says teams “up to 300”. The order form prevails. The Business, Standard and Plus editions come with a 30-day free trial.

Worked example: 10, 50, 200 and 600 users

The calculations use the Workspace prices above, excluding tax, on an annual commitment.

Organization	Choice	Monthly calculation	Per month	Per year
10 users	Business Standard	10 × 13.60	€136	€1,632
50 users	Business Plus, for Vault	50 × 21.10	€1,055	€12,660
200 users	Business Plus	200 × 21.10	€4,220	€50,640
600 users	Workspace Enterprise	Not public	Quote	Quote

These amounts cover the whole suite, email and storage included, not just Gemini. If the 200-user organization adds Gemini Enterprise Business for a 20-person team: 20 × $21 = $420 per month, at the entry price.

Above 300 users, Business plans are no longer available. As a reference point only, 600 users at the Business Plus price would come to 600 × 21.10 = €12,660 per month; that price is not open to them. The Enterprise quote depends on the edition chosen, Enterprise Standard or Plus, the number of users and the add-ons the page lists: Assured Controls, AI classification, AI Expanded Access, support level.

Where to start

For an employee or team lead without a technical background, four steps are enough.

1. Open the Gemini panel in the tool you are using, Gmail, Docs or Sheets, and ask for a real task. For example: “Summarize this week’s exchanges with supplier X and list the commitments made, with their dates.”
2. Create a notebook in Gemini Notebook with the documents from a case file, then question it. Each answer points to the passage it cites: check it.
3. Only put documents your organization allows into a notebook: Gemini Notebook does not follow every Workspace rule, as the data section explains.
4. Save what recurs as a skill, a reusable instruction recalled with one word in the conversation.

What an agent looks like day to day: on the Gemini Enterprise Business edition page, Google gives the example of a retailer that pulls its inventory data from OneDrive, Google Drive and Box. The request: identify the week’s five best sellers, produce a table of stock by channel and flag items below 500 units.

If you use Gemini for your own work or your team’s, you can stop here. The rest is for IT departments, CISOs (chief information security officers), DPOs (data protection officers) and rollout leads.

Gems, Gemini Notebook and Workspace Studio

From Gems to skills

A Gem is a custom assistant: instructions and files saved once in the Gemini app. Google is replacing them with skills, reusable instructions that users call by typing ”/” followed by their name, and can combine in a single request.

According to Google’s page on the transition, updated September 30, 2026:

• in Workspace, skills have been rolling out since October 5, 2026 for rapid release domains, and from October 19 to mid-November for scheduled release domains, two update tracks chosen by the admin;
• in the Gemini app, the rollout began on October 13;
• on March 1, 2027 at the earliest, on Business and Enterprise plans, Gems can no longer be created or used; those in the Gemini app will be converted into draft skills;
• skills do not sync between the Gemini app and the Workspace apps: to serve both, they must be recreated in Workspace Studio.

Skills are written in the SKILL.md format, a Markdown text file that other tools also read: Claude uses the same format. Writing a team’s instructions this way does not tie the organization to a single vendor.

Gemini Notebook

Gemini Notebook answers from the sources you give it: PDFs, Google documents, websites, YouTube videos, audio files. It also produces study guides, mind maps and audio overviews.

According to Google’s admin page, updated October 11, 2026, Drive files added to a notebook are autosynced, and only users with at least view access to the original file can use it as a source. Gemini Notebook caches those files, outside Drive.

Workspace Studio

A Workspace Studio flow is triggered by an event or a schedule: sorting a supplier’s emails, preparing a note before each meeting. Since the move to skills, the “Ask a Gem” step can no longer be added to new flows, and existing flows that use it will stop when Gems do.

Gemini Enterprise: editions, agents, connectors

Agents provided by Google

The Gemini Enterprise FAQ lists three ready-made agents:

• Deep Research, an in-depth research agent that explores a topic across internal and external sources for several minutes and returns a report;
• Gemini Notebook Enterprise, the version of Gemini Notebook under a Google Cloud contract;
• Data Insights, in preview, an open test before general availability: it queries data sources in natural language, in the Standard and Plus editions.

Employees can also build no-code agents, in preview, and flows in Workflow Builder, Gemini Enterprise’s own automation tool. Since October 13, 2026, these flows connect to Microsoft Teams, Notion and Salesforce.

Connectors

A connector is an authorized link between Gemini and a piece of software. Google advertises more than 100 integrations, including Microsoft 365 (Outlook, Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint), Slack, Confluence, Jira, Salesforce, ServiceNow, HubSpot and GitHub. According to Google, access respects each user’s existing permissions.

In Workspace, Gemini reads your Google email and files; with these connectors, Gemini Enterprise also reads the organization’s other software.

What Standard and Plus add

Standard and Plus add data residency, CMEK (customer-managed encryption keys), VPC Service Controls, which block access from outside the organization’s network, Google Cloud audit logs, the third-party agent marketplace and developer tools, compared in our coding agents comparison.

These editions also accept agents built elsewhere, through the A2A (Agent-to-Agent) protocol, a standard that lets two agents from different vendors hand a task to each other.

Running Workspace and Gemini Enterprise side by side

The two offerings are not either-or: the same employee can hold a Workspace license and a Gemini Enterprise license.

• The Business edition is added and managed from the Workspace admin console: Google’s help documents adding the subscription, assigning licenses to Workspace users and controlling their access to agents.
• The Standard and Plus editions are configured in the Google Cloud console and, according to the FAQ, accept several identity providers.
• Workspace data stays reachable by Gemini Enterprise through its Drive, Calendar, Gmail and Groups connectors, synced in real time.

The safest approach: a pilot in one department, using the 30-day trial, then a licensing decision based on measured usage.

Your data: training, certifications, regions, the Notebook exception

Training and human review

The Workspace privacy hub, updated October 6, 2026, states: “Your content is not human reviewed or otherwise used for Generative AI model training outside your domain without permission.”

The commitment appears in the “Training restriction” section of the Workspace terms. The Gemini Enterprise FAQ makes the same commitment for its three editions.

Retention and controls

Product	Prompts and responses	Admin setting
Gemini in Workspace apps	90 days to indefinitely	Period set by the admin
Gemini app	Up to 36 months	Auto-delete at 3, 18 or 36 months, 18 months by default
Gemini Notebook	Not kept after the session	None

Audit logs record Gemini activity in the app and in Docs, Gmail, Meet or Sheets. DLP applies to Gemini output inserted into an email or document, in the editions that include it.

Certifications

According to the privacy hub, Gemini holds SOC 1, 2 and 3 reports, audits of security controls carried out by an independent firm, and ISO 9001, 27001, 27701, 27017, 27018 and 42001 certifications, the last of which covers AI management systems.

It also holds FedRAMP High authorization, the highest level of the US program that authorizes cloud services for federal agencies.

Gemini Notebook has its own certifications. The admin page dated October 11, 2026 lists SOC 1, 2 and 3, ISO 27001, 27017, 27018, 27701 and 9001, and BSI C5:2020, the German cloud security standard. It lists neither ISO 42001, nor FedRAMP, nor HIPAA. The older privacy hub still says the opposite: the most recent page prevails, to be confirmed with Google before any sensitive use.

Data regions

According to Google’s help pages, Gemini prompts and responses are among the covered data. Storage in a region can be chosen from Business Standard.

In-region processing requires Enterprise Plus, Frontline Plus or the Data Regions add-on. Google notes that the data covered during processing varies by Workspace edition.

In Gemini Enterprise Standard and Plus, choosing Europe keeps storage and processing of core features in the EU, according to the residency page dated October 13, 2026.

That choice removes three things: the Gemini 3.1 Pro model, video generation, and grounding with Google Search, which supplements answers with web results. Gemini 4 Argon, available since October 13, remains available in Europe.

Google recommends the worldwide location, called global, unless security or regulatory constraints apply, for the latest models and the best response times. The European location, called eu, is the one to choose for personal or sensitive data.

The Gemini Notebook exception

The admin page dated October 11, 2026 states: “Your organization’s data region settings don’t apply to data processed and cached by Gemini Notebook.” The privacy hub adds: “Gemini Notebook is currently not integrated with Workspace DLP.”

A document added to a notebook therefore leaves the geographic area chosen for Workspace. To contain this, Google offers information rights management on files, which blocks their import. Gemini Notebook Enterprise, bought with Gemini Enterprise, does support European residency for its core features; its audio and video overviews are not processed in Europe.

Contract, applicable law and the organization’s obligations

• The contract: processing is governed by Google’s Cloud Data Processing Addendum, which frames Google as a processor under the GDPR. Google publishes the list of Workspace subprocessors, updated July 23, 2026.
• The DPIA: for a broad rollout, the data protection impact assessment is carried out with the DPO. Google publishes Gemini-specific guidance to support it.
• The CLOUD Act, the US law on authorities’ access to data held by service providers, applies to Google; our Mistral guide details that law.
• The CSE: with Vault, included from Business Plus, admins can retain, search and export Gemini app messages. In France, article L2312-38 of the Labor Code requires, in companies with at least fifty employees, informing and consulting the CSE, the works council, before the decision to implement such a monitoring tool: before activation, not after.
• The AI Act: rolling out Gemini makes the organization a deployer under the EU regulation; our article on what has applied since August 2, 2026 covers those obligations.

Security: document injection, notebook sharing

Injection through documents

Prompt injection means hiding, in an email or file Gemini reads, an instruction that hijacks its behavior; Google states that Gemini includes defenses, without promising they stop everything.

An agent that can write is therefore scoped more tightly than one that reads: in Gemini Enterprise, open connectors for reading first, then writing case by case.

Notebook sharing

According to Google’s admin page, the admin decides whether notebooks can be shared outside the organization: never, with a list of domains, or with any address. In that last case, they can also allow public sharing, open to anyone with the link.

A notebook holds excerpts of internal documents. Sharing it publicly amounts to publishing those documents.

Admin console decisions

Settings and defaults come from the Google documentation cited above; where it does not state a default, the table says so.

Decision	Default	Recommendation	Basis
Gemini Notebook, enablement	Not stated in the documentation	Pilot group, after a written rule on allowed documents	Data regions do not apply to it
Sharing notebooks outside the organization	Not stated	Off, or a domain list; public sharing unchecked	Google’s sharing page
Retention in the Gemini app	18 months	Align with the retention policy, with the DPO	Privacy hub
Vault for Gemini messages	Per Vault rules	Decide with the DPO; in France, consult the CSE before activation	Article L2312-38
Data regions	Choose United States, Europe or no preference	Europe for personal data	Data region help pages
Gems and skills	Both coexist	List Gems, rewrite the most used as skills before March 2027	Transition page
Gemini Enterprise, location	To choose; Google recommends global	eu if the data requires it, without Gemini 3.1 Pro or video	Residency page
Gemini Enterprise, Gemini 4 Argon	Off, turning on from October 27, 2026	Decide before October 27	Release notes, October 13
Gemini Enterprise, third-party models in developer tools	Off	Enable only with a spend cap	Release notes, October 8
Gemini app access to Gmail, Drive and Calendar	Not stated	Enable for the pilot, after informing employees	Privacy hub

Workspace or Gemini Enterprise: three questions

1. Must your agents read or act outside Google: Microsoft 365, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Jira? Gemini Enterprise is built for this, with more than 100 managed connectors.
2. Does your data require keys you manage, network perimeter controls or Google Cloud audit logs? These are Gemini Enterprise Standard and Plus features.
3. Do you need Gemini Notebook with European residency? Only the Enterprise version offers it for its core features.

Three “no” answers: Workspace is enough, on the right plan. A “yes” points to a need Workspace does not cover; the 30-day trial, in one department, lets you check that Gemini Enterprise meets it before any commitment.

Gemini compared with ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot and Mistral

We deploy and train on several of these tools. The criterion that most often decides between them is where your documents and identities already live.

Tool	Team entry price, annual billing	Price status	What sets it apart
Workspace Business Standard with Gemini	€13.60 per user per month	Excluding tax, full suite included	Gemini in Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drive and Meet
ChatGPT Business	€21 per seat per month	Listed public price, taxes not specified	Chat, agent and development in one app
Claude Team	€18 per seat per month	Excluding tax	Long tasks on folders of files, shared skills
Microsoft Copilot	€26.00 per user per month	Excluding tax	Inherits Microsoft 365 permissions
Mistral Vibe Team	$24.99 per user per month	Excluding tax	French vendor, on-premises deployment available in Enterprise

Prices taken on October 14, 2026 from the vendors’ French pages; Mistral lists its prices in dollars. The Workspace price also covers email and storage.

Claude even works inside Docs, Sheets and Slides, through an extension in beta on all its paid plans, according to Anthropic’s page viewed October 14, 2026. To go further on each:

• our ChatGPT Business guide, on its agents, credits and the end of GPTs;
• our Claude Cowork guide, on long tasks and their security;
• our Copilot Studio guide, on Microsoft’s agents and their governance;
• our Mistral for business guide, on Vibe and sovereign deployment.

Training your teams

The console sets what the tool can do. Usage sets what employees hand to it. Three situations are worth preventing: a client file imported into a shared notebook, a skill that sends emails without review, a summary circulated without checking its sources.

Training therefore covers three habits: knowing which data goes into which tool, writing a skill or scoping an agent, and checking what it produces before using it.

Colombani.ai is certified Qualiopi, the French quality certification for training providers, which is a condition for public and pooled funding. Its Gemini training takes place in the organization’s Workspace domain and works on participants’ real tasks. For a program tailored to your rollout, get in touch.

French companies can request funding from their OPCO, the skills operator that funds private-sector employee training. For a public body, training is paid from the employer’s training budget.

Its founder, Ulysse Trin, holds the Claude Certified Architect Professional, issued by Anthropic, and nine practitioner certifications issued by OpenAI.

To prepare the rollout, our kit brings together the ten admin console decisions with our recommendations and a one-page usage charter for employees. It also contains ten ready-to-use Gems by function, written to become skills, the grid of data allowed in each tool, including the Gemini Notebook exception on data regions, and an AI Act register entry template.