Google's Next Big Move: Taking On Apple, Syncing Your Digital Life

Google’s Next Big Move: Taking On Apple, Syncing Your Digital Life

Posted by Kevin in November 13th 2008

Google Sync Everyday I learn to love my Android driven T-Mobile G1 a little bit more. It’s not perfect, it currently doesn’t support Flash, doesn’t record video, and the camera is a bit slow to respond. Other than those issues, which will probably be improved with software upgrades, it shines in regards to just about everything else (i.e. email, web access, watching YouTube videos, etc.).

Because of a fraud alert that I placed upon my credit report, I had to visit a local T-Mobile store and verify my online purchase. After becoming aware that Walmart is a major distribution center of T-Mobile cell phones, I thought that I and Google, had made a huge mistake in choosing T-Mobile as a carrier. It’s not because I hate Walmart, after all they made it possible to cloth myself and my 5 siblings on an elementary school teacher’s salary as we were growing up. But rather I thought that the level of customer service would suffer in that these distribution points weren’t independent T-Mobile stores and I believed that this was the wrong target market for such a techie kind of phone. I was pleasantly surprised however, with the great customer service I received and the ease of use and overall friendliness of the G1. In light of this new information, I believe Google has made a brilliant choice and I expect to see sales of the G1 to soar.

The G1 is full of techie tools and features like a smartphone or iPhone but it’s also really easy to use like a consumer phone. It’s really a brilliant strategy by Google to maximize the distribution of the G1 while at the same time widening the scope of the targeted user base. Ultimately it should lead to greater G1 sales, more people accessing the mobile web via Google’s mobile browser, more search queries for Google, and another avenue for which Google to obtain revenue (i.e. mobile ads, Android, etc.). Let’s also not forget the mining of behavioral data and analytics that Google can obtain from the phone, the mobile browser, search, and Android itself.

I believe the next smart move for Google would be to bridge the gap from the desktop and laptop to our mobile devices. We can already check our Gmail, Google Calendar, and other Google based services via their suite of Google Mobile services but I think Google should take it a step further. Look for Google to create (via Google App Engine) or purchase synchronization technologies that permit online storage and access of your data from anywhere. One of the online storage and offsite backup solutions such as SugarSync or Syncplicity may be a prime target for acquisition of this endeavor. The result would be a direct competitor to Apple’s MobileMe service but it would probably be slightly less expensive and could be integrated with the many more applications and tools that Google possesses (i.e. search, Google Docs, etc.).

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