Is Google the new .Mac?
Nick Starr points out 
that while many people know Google is the new Microsoft Office, few stop to think how Google is also the new .Mac.
With the new Google browser sync (Firefox only, naturally) replicating some of the features of syncing in .Mac, Backup is the only .Mac feature that Google doesn’t have.
Google’s Blogger and Pages, Gmail and the soon-to-be-released GDrive offer many of the features that .Mac provides at a much better price.
I can’t help thinking that Google has bigger fish to fry.
In any case, Google is not doing a very good job of emulating the service that .Mac provides. Google’s services are almost always available.
(Finally, something in the RSS reader that is not a link to Letterbox )
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June 9th, 2006 at 1:42 am
While I agree, what about the integration to iLife. That is one of the top selling points for me, there have always been other services that offer the same features as .Mac with free or cheap prices. The one service that cannot be easily replicated is the .Mac syncing of iCal and such, but mainly the iLife integration. This is what keeps me paying year after year, ok its only been one year so far.
June 9th, 2006 at 3:51 am
I’ve never understood the complaints about .mac outages. Not to say that there haven’t been any, but never once have I had my e-mail or iDisk be unavailable, and never once have I lost any data through supposed outages in .mac. Seriously, not once. And it’s not like I check my e-mail only once every year — I probably religiously check my e-mail every 15 or so minutes. (In fact, I have my computer set to check for e-mail every 15 minutes.) So what gives? Am I the only one who is so lucky? From all the complaints about .mac, it seems so, but surely there are other people who find .mac reliable.
And .mac synching isn’t just about Safari bookmarks anymore — keychain passwords (which include application passwords, not just web passwords), mail accounts, mail rules, iCal events, the works. Google still doesn’t come close to what .mac offers, especially in the area of iLife integration, as Ben pointed out. Furthermore, web applications have NOTHING on true desktop applications, at least not yet. I have not seen any web application that actually replaces any desktop application on my Mac; web interfaces are largely still annoying point-and-click, and 80s innovation like drag-and-drop hasn’t reached these web apps yet. (e.g..: to move a message from one mailbox to another, you have to click a checkbox for the applicable messages, and then click a button or a pop-down menu for the action you want — select applications by dragging through them in the list, or file messages by dragging them to the appropriate inbox?! BLASPHEMY, you shouldn’t be able to do that!)
Sorry, but I don’t buy it. Google isn’t the new .mac. .mac is .mac. Google is still Google, which is just a web services company, and until web applications get reasonable interfaces, Google is still going to be just a web services company.
– Simone
June 9th, 2006 at 5:46 am
It’s hard for me to see how .Mac isn’t just slow IMAP with a few overpriced bonuses. .Mac needs lots more features in order to stay convincing as mail/sync/productivity alternative.
Now, I haven’t installed Google Browser Sync. I’m not sure if it just stores your settings in an archived e-mail message (like existing GDrive-like programs) or if they make a special place on Google to store these settings. (I’m guessing the latter; I’m guessing that they’re using space that will someday also be used for GDrive) That being said, ever wonder if they’re going to make use of those settings? Think they’ll data mine your bookmarks?
“Web 2.0″ could lead to some cool things, but there are some privacy issues… And I think those issues are greatly magnified if “Web 2.0″ ends up being made up of primarily Google applications.