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? ;-)"

Sounds like a good thing to me.

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.

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.

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.

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 iTV and Google Video Services

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.

Come on, what about Linux

I would like to see two things from Google... firstly, some gee whizz apps appearing first for Linux, and secondly, them to come out with a Google branded Linux with full indemnity against any patent(s) that Microsoft may allege to be infringed by Linux...

Is this a troll?

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.

Big companies!

One massive multinational corporation working with another. Why should I be excited about this? Is this news? Is this a good thing?

Google Loves Apple

While I do not know anyone who works for Google I have been a fan of Google and where they are going in the market for my own personal financial reasons....STOCK. I notice every time they take a camera inside Google or have photos of Google people they are using Macs. I am a Mac user and I understand that the majority of desktops are Windows, but I always wondered why Google we not publicly more PRO-Mac since they subscribe to that philosophy internally. I know I read somewhere about 3 years ago they employees were encouraged to choose a mac Desktop due to the ease of use and security of the platform. I would like to see more Pr-Mac companies out there or at least offer your employees the options to pick what they run....Windows, Linux or Mac?

All for it.

I've just recently switched back over to mac from working with a PC for a while after selling a mac mini. The one thing i've had a problem with both then and now is finding software that i used on the PC and finding a worthwhile replacement on the mac.

With google joining the team with mac development it seems that other companies may join them and start to develop programs for the mac platform, or would that be too far fetched to see? I guess it may turn into a version of "monkey see, monkey do" for some companies now that google shows that there is a large market for a different system other than windows.

is this substantive?

Does this hint at an alliance of the "enemy of my enemy is my ally" type or it just the currently cool kids getting together to be, well, cool?

makes sense

Mac's don't enjoy a huge portion of the market share when looking at the overall picture, but when you look at some key professional markets -- music, video, and web design and programming, Mac's are actually pretty popular. Only makes sense that Google, who has catered unconditionally to developers would do such a thing. Not to mention, it just makes sense to support a platform that is in direct competition with Google's own competition, that being Microsoft.

Re:makes sense

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!

Amit Singh at Google?

Only good things can possibly come from that.

That must be the coolest job in the world: working on Macs for Google.

just curious

Also wondering if all this is just Google's response to Apple's market growth or maybe a more serious partnership is coming?

When you're talking about Apple's market growth are you just talking about Apple's stock prices going up? Unless Apple actually gets a larger chunk of the desktop, I don't see what benefit this would be to Google. Is Apple actually getting a larger chunk of the desktop? As a fan of both BSD flavored Unix and the Mac GUI, I had always been hoping that companies would develop for the Mac just because it's so cool. I've just had to accept that things just don't work that way. Even in the free software world, development for the Mac just means porting from Linux to the Mac, and even then, only after the MS Windows port is finished.

Not the first big news in Apple-Google partnership

You do remember that Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, recently joined Apple's board, right?

And you do remember Google's place in Steve Jobs' commencement speech at Stanford? And I quote:

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Sensible

The largest threat to Google's online services business is Microsoft. Microsoft can and does illegally leverage their monopoly on desktop OS's to defeat superior offerings from competitors. Microsoft is putting a lot of resources into defeating Google, not only by making comparable services, but by tying those services to Windows and tying the Web in general to Windows by their use of proprietary technologies and their intentional refusal to fully implement standards in IE. Microsoft's plan is obviously to keep Web technologies weak by keeping capabilities on a default Windows install weak until they have a solution that locks people in.

If MS is using their OS monopoly to leverage an attack on Web services, it only makes sense for Google to make an effort to return fire and do what they can to mitigate that threat. The most widely adopted alternative (by most accounts) is Mac OS X. The small amount of cash needed to support it as well as Windows can potentially provide a great deal of benefit. Additionally, it provides a test as to whether or not they are keeping their services portable, something that promotes good coding in general and fits with their long term goals.

Now is that their motivation? I'd say, that is some justification, but probably not their main motivation. The truth is, a lot of people at Google use macs (or so I've been told, I know two people there and one uses a Mac) and they want services to work because of that. Google has been very practical about this. Mac compatibility is not a requirement, especially for Beta software they have acquired, but everything works on the Mac eventually that makes sense on that platform. Keep up the good work guys.

Re:Sensible

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 you

Google for Mac-sites

http://www.google.com/mac [google.com]

Follow the money...

...do you have any idea how much iTMS is worth? Talk about profit...

Speaker BIOS?

How many BIOSes does it have?? I know these new Macs are hi-end kit but even so....

Google and Apple, sitting in a tree..

- Apple has the iPod. - Google has YouTube. - the possibilities are lucrative.

Feb. 2007 Slashdot News Item.

Google Buys Apple.

it's all about TV ads and Google PC

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

Flying chairs

Maybe Google will fucking kill Apple.

Google for web services, mac for desktop

With people getting annoyed with .Mac outages, the $100 annual fee, etc. I propose that Apple outsource/partner .Mac services to google and may be google can reduce the annual fee or eliminate it. Then, google can write desktop equivalents for windows while Apple writes all the Mac desktop specific stuff (with google input). So, Picasa integrates with iTV on the PC side, iPhoto integrates with iTV on the Mac side, you get the idea. Now, that Apple is trying to expand beyond the mac market share, products like the iTV, any future iPods, iPhones should be able to integrate with Windows as well as Macs. Google can probably help with this. Content management works well for Google.

Would somebody think of the janitors!!!

If what the OP is alluding too, a possible merger/purchase involving these two companies, actually happened, there simply would not be enough rolls of paper towels to stuff down the ./ communities collective pants to prevent a catastophic biological speciman spill. Oh the humanity.

lagging behind in Safari compatibility

> "While Google generally seems to lag behind in Safari compatibility..."

everybody has been lagging behind in Safari compatibility because it's only been 4 months or so since Apple released a simple goddamn javascript debugger for it.

Not to mention my growing love for Google.

Once Spanning Sync is released, they will be able to completely replace .mac for me, and for free.

Glad I bought my MacBook

Considering that I've been unofficially promised an internship at Google's Phoenix office this coming summer, maybe it's time I start to learn a little Cocoa/Xcode. After all, I've had Hillegass's book sitting on my shelf for a few months now... *starts reading*

many google employees seems to be mac users

It seems like every other Google employee I meet is using a Mac laptop. That probably has something to do with it.

They need more OS X wizards...

...or even just some half-baked apprentices. Google Notifier for Mac takes 100MB of RAM and constantly takes around 1/2% of CPU time, just sitting there idle.

What I see in this

Apple demos iTV. Google and Apple form a relationship. Google buys YouTube. Will YouTube be a menu selection on the iTV ? Me thinks yes..

Microsoft

Microsoft is starting to lose ground on the desktop. Apple is eroding market share from the top with expensive, trendy systems. Linux is coming from the bottom with the tech savy crowd that wants something flexible and Free.

Things look good :-)

iTMS + Ads = money, lots of mony!

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).

Does it matter if Safari support lags?

Safari is so broken I never use it. Periodically it reaches a point where all future attempts to connect to a web site fail with Safari hanging indefinitely as if waiting for a response from the server. Happens on a friend's Mac too.

Not only does Firefox work better on the Mac, it actually looks better than Safari, pretty weird given that we're talking about an Apple application here. So as long as Google properly support Firefox I'm happy. (Though I slightly prefer Safari RSS handling.)

Mac = Google PC

I think the Mac really is the "Google PC" that has been rumored. The key thing is that I'll bet it will be more a symbiotic partnership instead of a re-badged Mac; the next version of OSX could ship with the entire suite of available Google Mac apps, Google says that the Mac works best for their software, maybe new apps and features that are not available on the Windows version, etc. I could also imagine .Mac taking on a more "Google" hue, with docs written in Writely or whatever available for sync on .Mac.

Even though their stuff is essentially web-based, Google still needs a delivery platform. As others have suggested, it's possible that the killer-apps of the future will be both on-and-offline and thus having both Apple and Google working on both sides of the equation, together they will provide enough benefit to take on Microsoft, who has proven time and again that they want the playground for themselves, alone.

If a Google/Apple partnership works out, they have a very real potential of hitting at both of Microsoft's profitable products: Windows and Office, upon which the MS empire rests.

Wither indie devs already bridging the gap?

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 [mesadynamics.com] – converts Google web page hosted gadgets into Dashboard widgets.
• Google Maps Plugin [briantoth.com] – integrates Apple Address Book with Google Maps and Google Earth.
• Dashalytics [rovingrob.com] – gives you quick access to prettified Google Analytics stats in a widget.
• Spanning Sync [spanningsync.com] – 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?

Merger

I heard Google were interested in buying Apple.

There are also rumors of Solaris uptake...

I wonder if Google is looking to diversify their server-side platform support beyond Linux?

I was really happy to see Google Earth on OS X

Recently I had a tantrum and pushed my PC off my desk. Not really but I put it somewhere else and got out my iMac. I have been very happy every day since I did that. I still use Linux and Unix also, FreeBSD and ubuntu. But after I put the Mac back up, I found BBEdit, and was very happy to find a Mac OS X port of Google Earth. I really like Google Earth. Microsoft wishes they had Google Earth. I wouldn't have been happy giving Earth up, and it alone is not worth going back to the PC. What the Mac has going for it is Apple's polish on top of FreeBSD's heritage of Unix stability and power, Oh and the thousands of applications. I don't think the Apple is "better" than a good version of Linux. I think it is about the same. I like both, after all, under the hood they are similar.

Google Earth

Since Google and Apple are partnering with each other then I would like to see better integration between Google Earth and Address Book.

1 - Google Earth gets the ability to see Address Book entries so while using Google Earth we can select an address and go to it.
2 - Same the for Address Book but it will start Google Earth if it is no running
3 - Addresses can be added to My Places from Address Book and they can be added to Address Book from Google Earth.

Re:Yes, but where's Google Desktop?

Top right corner.

Re:Yes, but where's Google Desktop?

That would seem really redundant. One could argue Apple's Spotlight is better than Google Desktop because it is more extensible to multiple file formats (allows developers to write plug-ins). Spotlight was indexing more file formats before Google Desktop first version. Spotlight will index a document up to 10MB, Google indexes only the first 5,000 words in a file, while MSN indexes one megabyte. Also Dominic Giampaolo who created BFS for BeOS, shortly worked in Google and now Apple developing Spotlight to work on top of HFS+. I like Picasa on Windows, because it is light weight and fast, but Google probably realizes that iPhoto does a decent job. There are features on both sides that I like, but iPhoto on the Mac is good enough and probably why Google won't have Picasa until iPhoto becomes a slow and lumber behemoth program.

Re:Yes, but where's Google Desktop?

Not the same, but QuickSilver is an awesome search and run utility. Although I have started to think of it as Start -> Run on steroids rather than a search tool.

http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/ [blacktree.com]

Re:Macs...

Macs were so sick of getting there ass kicked they made a good OS.I grew up with Macs sucking hardcore. I always believed that a mac was flashy and didn't do anything. My girlfriends brother in law showed me Mac OSX and it's so amazing it shouldn't count as a Mac OS.

That's because Mac OS X is more like NeXTSTEP 5.x than it is Mac OS 10.x.

Steve Jobs and his engineers took over when Apple bought NeXT* in 1997. First step was damage control, next step was marketing, and now we're finally seeing the sweet products and solid engineering. Apple was great in the 1980s, but that old hardware sucked on newer versions of Mac OS by the early 1990s, and the new machines then weren't much better. By 1996 the Mac OS world was a hellufa mess.

*Some people say NeXT bought Apple for negative $400M :)

Re:smiley face

Winking face... even more gay. 75% of the time a winking smiley is attached to a limp-wristed unfunny joke used to make a point in some debate.

82.5% of statistics are made-up

Re:$$Money$$

How exactly is Google getting "edged" of the Windows desktop? Last I checked, their market share was going up....