Google Sync vs MobileMe

Google are really treading on Apple's toes with some of their latest features - it's making MobileMe look very expensive! A year ago Apple's MobileMe service was fairly good value, keeping all your personal information in sync across multiple devices with over the air updates to/from your iPhone & Mac & PC & iPod Touch, it was great for £59 a year. Calendars, contacts and emails all synced with a single point, www.me.com, which works really well. Also you get web space for an iDisk which saves you carrying around a USB Flash drive. Unfortunately for Apple though, Google now offer many equivalent services. Google Sync is the main equivalent product, it uses Microsoft Exchange Server to push email, contacts and calendars.

Email
I never really used my MobileMe email address because I didn't want to be tied into a contract to keep my email address. Google's GMail service is free for personal users and funded by advertising. A point to make about GMail's advert's is that although they are text based and discreet (unlike Windows Live Mail), Google's server reads your email in order to show you adverts that you may be interested in due to the content of the email. With MobileMe emails are pushed to your iPhone, but with Google Sync you can get your emails from any device that works with Microsoft Exchange Server. So push emails arrive on your Windows Phone or iPhone.

Verdict: Google

Contacts
MobileMe syncs contacts seamlessly over the air, perfectly. Google Sync only allow a limited number of fields per contact, but it is free! Contacts work with Blackberry, Nokia S60, Windows and iPhone using Google sync. Apple's service is limited to the iPhone.

Verdict: Apple

Calender
The MobileMe calendar is really good but I wish you could edit which calender an event sits in on an iPhone. Google calender doesn't look half as slick as MobileMe, but it costs way less than half as much! As with the Contacts above Google Sync supports many more devices.

Verdict: Google

Bookmarks (Favourites in Internet Explorer)
Google Chrome offers a Bookmark Sync service with their super fast web browser. You can sync Safari bookmarks over MobileMe. The system works well - but the Google version is free!

Verdict: Google

Gallery
The MobileMe web galleries are really slick and sync fast with iPhoto. They don't always work in Internet Explorer though, which is a shame. Picasa web albums are uploaded via Picasa 3, which isn't available for Mac.

Verdict: Apple

iDisk
The iDisk is the best MobileMe feature and has no direct competition from Google. The much rumoured GDisk is almost inevitable one day with web storage already available through Google Docs and the much anticipated of web based storage for the Google Chrome OS netbooks.

So the choice is yours! Most likely a mixture of services from different websites/companies will give the best end user experience. For example flickr is probably the industry standard photo sharing site, but it won't push emails to your smart phone!