Google Chat's interface gets redesigned to match the looks of Google's other productivity tools. And similar to Drive, Docs, Sheets, etc., the new look is based on the company's Material Design 3 system. The interface gets rounded buttons and a rounded search bar and blue accents all around. Some minor changes to the main message view, a new topic button, compose setup, and thread panel within direct messages and spaces.
Google Chat recently added a new feature that allowed Space Managers to create announcement-only channels, similar to what you can do in Slack.