I see Apple dumping dotmac. They really do nothing for dotmac members anymore and often dotmac members can get better stuff for free from places like Google. I see Apple making their software sync with google products to mimic the functions of dotmac so Apple can dump the service they are putting little effort into. Many third parties are already doing this and Apple still has not delivered the dotmac dashboard widgets they promised two years ago.

"You buy a Mac and you automatically get a free Google account."

Wow, an elusive, rare, expensive Google account for free and all I have to do is buy a $1000 computer? Where do I sign?

.Mac flat out failed and partnering with Google is a good move.

We enjoy .mac quite a lot. It's worth $69/ year not to subject myself to ads. .Mac my not be a fantastic successs, but my guess is it doesn't eat much and dumping it altogether would anoy at least 10% of the installed base.

Going with Google is an interesting alliance.

"It's worth $69/ year not to subject myself to ads."

Too bad they charge $99/year. $69 is the 1st year promo, but only when you buy a Mac. Even at $69 its not worth it. .Mac was free when it first came out, and all we got was an email account and free iDisk.

My company gets a corporate discount on Apple products, and .Mac was recently removed from that program. I decided to get an account last year when I upgraded my Mac. I had it until last month, and decided not to renew. The only thing I sort of miss is iDisk, but I'm not losing sleep over it. gDisk gets me online storage through Google, though its not quite as elegant.

I like it. You can find it on ebay for around $70 and if I remember right my girlfriend got her upgrade form Amazon last year for the same price.

I'm do agree that they need to update the features but I'll keep getting it for mail. .mac allows me to check my email on my MacBook via IMAP and then when I get home I check it via POP, removing messages from the server at that time.

With gmail any mail you check via the web won't get downloaded the next time you check it via POP until you go reset it in the preferences. I haven't checked this lately but that's the way it used to be.

"...a Leopard virtual machine that functions like Parallels in Coherence mode booting from a Google hosting OS..."

Is that good?

Specifically, Apple may look for a way to bring Google apps to .Mac customers

That would be great! Because, otherwise, you'd have to go to all that trouble of going to Google's site to use them!

dotmac should be free for users who pay for a copy of Mac OS X or buy a new mac. That way, Apple may actually make more money since more people may pay for their Mac OS X upgrades as opposed to pirating it. Dotmac is basically en email account and a small storage (1GB), too small for being useful for backups at least and too slow for anything. Then Apple has added some poorly implemented, often bizarre, functions such as Groups instead of including obvious features such as iCal calendars accessible from the web. In the beginning of dotmac, members got free bonus software but nowadays that only happens towards the end of august which is the time where most users decide whether to renew or not.

I like my .Mac account. I know it isn't the most cost effective means to get the capabilities provided, but I like the integration. I like being able to auto sync across my desktop and laptop for current or long term files, transparently.

The website capabilities for someone that doesn't want to deal with the details of a website are also nice. If I just want to put up some photos for family, it's fairly painless.

For the average user, it's a great way to get capability and ease of use. For the Pro user, they should be doing better.

I use dot mac because it removes a layer of BS between me and getting things done, just like OS X does.

8.25$ a month for tight integration, is worth it to me. But I keep an eye out for the discounted boxes during the year, and mine is more like 6$, either way.