Google/Apple partnership

Pundits are speculating that Apple and Google will former a deeper partnership during next week's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco. Specifically, Apple may look for a way to bring Google apps to .Mac customers -- a notion supported strongly by the fact that Apple hinted at the recent D5 "All Things Digital" conference that .Mac is due for an overhaul. The companies have long pointed to the fact that they share a common competitor -- Microsoft -- as an impetus for expanded alliance.

Essentially, the partnership boils down to this: Apple knows user interface design, and has exceptional expertise in knowing how to deliver comfortable, straightforward means of interaction with systems. Google has the raw horsepower of a nationwide super data center, the speed, and user-base that could really benefit from a touch of Apple's interaction magic.

A Wired News blog poster writes "Cloud computing is the hot new thing in the world of technology right now; Apple is a complete laggard; and it knows it needs to fix it. Apple makes beautiful hardware, but it hasn't improved on .Mac, its cloud based storage offering, in years. You get 1GB of storage on .Mac for $100. That's laughable in an era where you can get double that for nothing. Meanwhile, Google runs cloud based hardware and software better and cheaper than anyone in the world right now. How does it make money? By getting as many people as possible looking at advertising alongside search and other various software offerings. Imagine all the traffic from the following: You buy a Mac and you automatically get a free Google account."

Meanwhile, an InfoWorld article speculates on some specific technology tie-ins: Google spreadsheet joining Apple's Pages and Keynote; iWork as a caching front end for Google Docs and Spreadsheets; a Leopard virtual machine that functions like Parallels in Coherence mode booting from a Google hosting OS.

by MacNN Staff