Google’s Email Problem: Corporate Email Without IMAP = Game Over.
Jason Calacanis loves “Google Office” or “Google Apps” or whatever you want to call it - he things it’s great. I think the applications are fine, but, if you’re a regular reader, you’ll know I think that for most businesses, they’re not really relevant (at least not at the moment). However, Jason has one problem - the way that Gmail integrates (or doesn’t integrate) with his Blackberry (see his blog entry).
The root of this problem is actually very simple to understand. In 2007, a corporate email system without IMAP4 support is always going to suck compared to a corporate email system with IMAP4 support. And Gmail doesn’t currently support IMAP. Maybe they’ll get IMAP working; maybe they won’t - Gmail’s threaded, tagged email discussions make implementing IMAP support tricky. Well, I’d say they shoulda thought of that one before they started…
But anyway… I digress. The point is: if you want to manage your email optimally on multiple devices e.g. on a handheld, and the web, and in rich desktop and laptop applications, you need IMAP. POP3 doesn’t cut it. End of.
By the way, Jason also wants native, wireless sync’ing of his Google Calendar with his Blackberry. It’s a reasonable request, but it’s a fundamentally different problem. You see, the email sync’ing problem is Google’s fault for not supporting modern Internet mail standards (well, I say “modern”, IMAP4 has been around since 1996). The challenges for wireless sync’ing of calendars on Blackberries, on the other hand, are all about RIM’s business model… which makes it a different kettle of fish altogether…
Asam Bashir wrote:
“Without commenting specifically on the rumor, Schmidt reportedly said Google and Apple are “doing more and more things together.”
“We have similar goals, similar competitors,” he added. ”
http://appleinsider.com/article.php?id=2547
so, more confirmation of very close colaboration between Apple and Google..
http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?guid=%7BCB371615%2D9828%2D4D12%2D8040%2DB64CDBB47560%7D&siteid=mktw&dateid=39146%2E67511125%2D891090817&dist=nbs
Posted 06 Mar 2007 at 3:59 pm ¶
simon wrote:
I wonder why Eric said this - it seems a surprising statement for a CEO to make in that environment. Either this stuff is, to borrow a term from Apple’s COO, “worthless”, in which case it’s better not to have said anything because it could create unrealistic expectations among shareholders. Or this stuff is important, in which case - is this the place to make a disclosure like that? Disclosures of material stuff are supposed to be made in ways such that all shareholders get the information at the same time.
Anyway, for the sake of Apple users, I hope this doesn’t mean Leopard will have the dubious “benefit” of having various pieces of Google desktop software bundled with new Macs e.g. “Google Desktop for Mac OS X”, or “Google Toolbar for Safari”. Ughhhhh…
Be interesting to see if they’re doing anything genuinely innovative together, or, whether, in fact, this stuff is little more than a bundling deal.
Time will tell…
Posted 06 Mar 2007 at 4:48 pm ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
I think they might experiment on tying together .Mac services with Google apps, that would be interesting. I use .Mac for lots of things like syncing/publishing calanders, backup, reading my bookmarks and addressbook.app from any browser - and it would be logical to sync all this with documents from Google Apps. This would be a very powerfull combination for enterprise customers who have been comfirmed to be a target for Leopards additions. Also, very powerfull collaboration and desktop sharing tools in iChat will make things even more interesting, you can already add icq, jabber, not sure about Google chat, not tried it.
Google has already proved it can make very Mac friendly apps, we’re very happy with them so far, we like the Mac’ness of Google Earth, and Apple adds Google search as default on Safari, toolbars of the type for Windows are no go for Google and they’ve respected this difference.
The oldest rumors of Google involvement in consumer orientated aspects of Leopard come from things found in Leopard developer prieviews, like GPS data in file info for iLife applications. But this would only make sence for a handheld touchscreen pad with built-in GPS, or just the iPhone
http://www.macrumors.com/2006/10/04/iphoto-6-0-5-google-maps-integration-and-apple-gps-enabled-device/
Posted 06 Mar 2007 at 9:33 pm ¶