Google's Growing Love For the Mac

An anonymous reader writes "While browsing the 2007 Macworld speaker bios, I found an interesting Google+Mac piece of news. Looks like Google has appointed the famous Amit Singh in charge of their Mac Engineering (also confirmed on Singh's website). While Google generally seems to lag behind in Safari compatibility they have been offering some native Mac software. We earlier heard Google CEO Eric Schmidt's joining Apple's board of directors. Then following Microsoft MacBU's lead, Google started their own Mac Blog a few weeks earlier. Google's jobs website also lists several Mac openings. If Singh's technical expertise and history of OS X wizardry any indication, we can hope for some cool Mac software from Google. Also wondering if all this is just Google's response to Apple's market growth or maybe a more serious partnership is coming? ;-)"

Comments

Sounds like a good thing to me.

[Zarniwoop_Editor]

Anytime we get wider acceptance of platforms other than Microsoft it is a good thing. It's not that I'm anti-microsoft so much as I prefer to have choices when it comes to computing platforms. Any effort made by companies to support more than just microsoft properly is a good thing in my books.

Re:Sounds like a good thing to me.

[b0s0z0ku]

Web apps are a great thing - if you have reliable, very fast, Internet access 24/7. I suspect the killer app is some hybrid of web and client apps. The data would get still stored locally. Not everyone is comfortable with losing access to data whenever the net goes down, plus the privacy implications and the fact that local storage is faster. As far as the applications themselves, they'll be in Java or some other platform-independent language, but they'll be cached locally for the most part. Again, you wouldn't want to be stuck with a brick when the your net access breaks. Perhaps updates and seldom-used features would download on demand from the net, but things like MS Office more or less do that already.

Going to all web apps would be going back to the mainframe/dumb terminal days of the 1970s. It would negate most of the advantages of owning a PC.

-b.

Re:Sounds like a good thing to me.

[Saint Fnordius]

Reliability isn't the issue as much as exposure: after all, bank vaults offer better security, but some documents you'd rather entrust to your private safe instead of having to contact the bank every time, no matter how secure.

I think the biggest problem/complaint people have against net storage versus local storage is the ability of others to access the data. There are some things you trust to store outside of your home like money, since the bank guarantees better security with tight access controls. They have a history of less risk than a more personal solution. It makes sense to trust them rather than your mattress.

Online info storage, though, more resembles a train station locker. Sure, you may be the only one with the safe combination, but it's stored in a public place and you really don't know how easy it is to pick the lock. And since the location experiences a lot of traffic passing through, you don't know who could be eavesdropping/reading over your shoulder.

I think that web-based tools will migrate more to personal/intranet versions for this reason. I can run my LAMP tools on my PowerBook and access them locally, and in fact I already do this. Companies would love to use (for example) Google's office tools on their own servers, and not have to trust Google all the time. It's all about controlling who has a copy of the data, about maintaining privacy/secrecy.

Re:Sounds like a good thing to me.

[IAmTheDave]

For me, a single redundant app is better than iPhoto's incessant copying of my photos into it's own directory structure. Talk about redundancy.

it's all about TV ads and Google PC

[boxlight]

The way I see it, Google wants to own the multi-billion dollar TV ad revenue market. And Apple is on the verve of owning the way TV is distributed from the internet to the living room.

Google + Apple is natch.

Additionally, Google has been long-rumored to want a "Google PC" -- if I was google I would OEM Mac hardware and ship it with "mom friendly" software that just does email, photos&tv, and web browsing software clients that only run full screen.

boxlight

Re:Sensible

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Do you mind elaborating how exactly Microsoft is leveraging its monopoly to defeat Google?

Bundling IE is the major method, and then what they include and do not include in IE.

The only concrete example I see here is that they do not implement standards in IE - but pray, I ask you, does Firefox fully implement all the standards?

Well, Firefox does implement standards in general. Every time I've followed the W3C spec it has worked in Firefox (and Safari and Opera, etc.) but it has not worked in IE. IE implements about 50% of the standards while other browsers are close to 90% I'd guess. No one is perfect, but IE versus the industry shows a huge difference.

All of this, however, is academic. Firefox is not bundled with a monopoly and what works and what is included and what is broken does not help the Firefox team take over some other market. Unless you have a monopoly, you can't use that monopoly as leverage. If Firefox does not implement some feature, it is just as easy to use Opera. If IE fails to implement something, because it is bundled in Windows, most people will not switch because everything else is harder. It requires education, knowledge, and technical expertise to download, install, and run any browser but IE.

Last time I checked, Firefox 2 did not pass the ACID2 test (if that's any measure of standards).

The ACID2 test is edge cases for the most part, not a test of how comprehensively a given browser adheres to standards. It is like shining a laser on a mirror to see how reflective it is. Firefox and Opera and Safari are all consumer grade mirrors and the ACID2 test is useful for determining which is best. IE is like a piece of aluminum and using the ACID2 test on it is a waste of time.

IE7 is a great improvement over IE6 and an indication that Microsoft is listening, and doing something to change themselves.

I auto-generate some pages. I wrote the code based upon the spec. When I wrote it, I tested it. It worked fine in every single browser I could find, except IE, which completely failed because they did not implement most of CSS2 and any of XHTML that was not coincidentally HTML. When IE7 came out I tested it too. It completely failed to render as well, and added an additional random bug. From reading the IE dev teams comments it seems they're up to implementing about 50% of CSS2 and still haven't implemented any XHTML. They fixed some bugs, but are nowhere near implementing the standards the rest of the industry has had for many, many years.

My point is that with so many eyes watching Microsoft at any given moment and at their every move (DOJ, EU, *every* software company affected by Microsoft), this monopoly thing is getting old.

I agree, MS should stop abusing their monopoly or the courts should actually take meaningful action against them. MS won't stop though, because they're making a fortune breaking the law. The courts won't act though, because MS is one of the largest contributors to both the Republican and Democratic parties and our government is absurdly corrupt.

Perhaps when making this statement, you should provide concrete examples on how exactly that is happening.

I did and I've elaborated upon them, but I find explaining antitrust abuse tedious. I've explained it on Slashdot a hundred times by now, but the vast majority of the people who respond have no understanding of the law or the purpose of the law. Somehow they missed that chapter in Econ 101. It isn't really all that complex, but I'm sick of explaining it over and over again. Five minutes with wikipedia and a reasonably intelligent person can see the obvious abuses from Microsoft and why they are detrimental/illegal. And yet, every time I post about MS's monopoly abuse someone has to respond with an analogy and those analogies always (and I do mean always) reference the actions of a company that is not a monopoly. Maybe these people are astroturfers, but I only have so much time.

Even your post, you compare IE to Firefox, but IE is bundled with Windows, which is a monopoly, while the Firefox team has no monopoly on anything. Why people can't understand how this changes things is beyond my understanding.

Re:makes sense

[pivo]

anywho, Macs don't have any advantage in the field of programming, seeing as C# is fairly popular today, which is written with Microsoft's Visual Studio.

Hey, that's the stupidest comment I've seen in days. Congratulations!

iTMS + Ads = money, lots of mony!

[bWareiWare.co.uk]

We all now how hard Google wants to dominate video Ads, the way they dominate text. (to clarify I mean, adds appearing IN video content, not video format adds appearing in text content)

They are talking to the TV companies who currently control video distribution. But why tie yourself to yesterdays companies, it is iTMS (and possible YouTube) that are likely to control video content soon.

Google have already realised that keyword searching isn't a killer 'product' for video content, people just don't want to plug keyboards into their TV's. So the are looking at other ways to enter and dominate that ad market.

What surprises me is Google's (public) lack of contact with the big games companies. Obviously in-game advertising has significant potential, but it is also likely that the next gen winner will control a significant portion of the 'living room'. Why should a Blue-ray disc force you to sit though last months trailers when it is being played on a PS3 sitting on a nice fat broadband connection. Live may be for downloadable games now, but what would stop Microsoft using that network to push video (to your TV and/or Zune).

Wither indie devs already bridging the gap?

[saddino]

If Singh's technical expertise and history of OS X wizardry any indication, we can hope for some cool Mac software from Google.

Although Singh's hiring is definitely a step in the right direction concerning Google's commitment to the Mac, it's been a long time coming. In the meantime, independent Mac developers have already started writing tools and utilities that bridge the gap between OS X and Google. Just a few examples (the first being a shameless plug, natch):

• Amnesty Generator – converts Google web page hosted gadgets into Dashboard widgets.
• Google Maps Plugin – integrates Apple Address Book with Google Maps and Google Earth.
• Dashalytics – gives you quick access to prettified Google Analytics stats in a widget.
• Spanning Sync – syncs iCal with Google Calendar.

I suppose the real question is: does Google's newfound enthusiasm for OS X simply mean rewriting all these existing tools in-house?

It's all about iTV and Google Video Services

[iendedi]

Apple's new iTV gizmo coming out in January will be able to feed google and youtube video to your television in a nice handy way. I think the idea is to bring a new age of video to the masses via google and Apple.

This is the endgame that I think they are aiming for.

Is this a troll?

[Slur]

You are factually wrong on several points:

Single-user mode: Very easy, just hold down COMMAND-S at startup. With applejack installed repairs can be very quick. In a pinch archive-and-installing the system gets you back to where you were very quickly, preserving settings.

Context menus: Actually Mac uses them all over the place now, and they are comprehensive.

Mac Consistency: You're completely wrong about application behavior. For all applications, not just the Finder, only the clicked-on window comes to the front. An application that uses PALETTES (like Photoshop) shows them when one of its windows is active. The key-combination to hide apps is COMMAND-H for all apps that don't override it for legacy reasons. Adobe apps traditionally use Cmd-H for "Extras" so they change the hide key to COMMAND-CONTROL-H. In any case, you can always COMMAND-OPTION-CLICK any Dock icon to hide all other apps. Icons appearing under the Dock: It's so easy to avoid. Put the Dock on the side of the screen and make it smaller for the best experience.

Linux is getting better all the time though, I agree with that.