Apple vs Google: World War 3.0?

For the past couple of years, Apple has been pushing for sales of its .Mac service, which is soon becoming MobileMe, an online service that integrates with Apple's desktop software, keeping everything up-to-date.  Mac users are able to easily publish the websites they created in iWeb, share the photos they organize with iPhoto, and synchronize the contacts and emails that they store in Apple's Address Book and Mail.  This seems like a valuable service to be paired with the iLife suite, and not necessarily a bad deal at $99 per year.  But even for Steve Jobs, it's hard to compete with free.

And that's just what Google has been offering: the ability to easily publish a personal websites, share photos managed by a desktop application, and store contacts from multiple sources in a single repository...all for five cents less than a nickel.  Even though I'm sitting on my couch typing on my Mac, you might be able to tell by my website where my online loyalty lies.

I use Gmail because it has a terrific interface, some bonus features that I like, and is free.  I use Blogger because it's highly visible, easy to publish to, and allows me to maintain a professional-looking site without spending much time designing style.  Oh, I almost forgot: it's free.

I use Apple's computers because of their simple design, their lack of major technical issues, and their comfortable OS.  For those reasons and many others, I expect to be a supporter of Apple's products for a while.  But as Google improves its product suite and offers more integration with Mac applications (you can already upload to Google's Picasa from iPhoto), I see Apple's hundred-dollar-a-year software becoming obsolete in a hurry.  After all, why pay $99/a year for something if a perfectly comparable substitute is available for free?

Gmail -- now with a dry sense of humor

As you may know, Gmail's computers explore our emails' content in hopes to learn more about us as consumers. Thomas Friedman predicted this type of marketing in The World is Flat by using the example of a young couple searching the internet for information about their soon-to-come first child. With their how-to results came customized ads for baby crap, like strollers, bottles, and toys. Friedman envisions these ads to eventually transcend the personal computer and find their way onto consumers' television and radio programs.

We're not quite there yet, but we're getting closer. But even though Google isn't laying down custom television ads, it is picking up on our sarcasm. Consider this:

Unlike me, just about all of my college buddies are single...I mean really single. And they all like to give me grief about my transition from a collegiate knuckle head to a domestic, engaged professional. There is, of course, some serious substance to their argument.

Yesterday, I emailed Steve (website) and mentioned a new piece of furniture that my fiance and I bought for our house. In the nature of giving me a hard time for being 'domestic,' he sent me a very simple, sarcastic reply:

"Well isn't that just adorable."

I shook my head, accepting his remark, but then looked closely at the ads on my screen. One read (and I'm paraphrasing because I can't directly copy an ad), "Dry sense of humor? Check out our funny, sarcastic t-shirts."

How about that?!? Their marketing campaigns have actually evolved from looking from key words to key phrases. Is it possible that they're only looking at those key phrases stated by one man to another? Now I'm curious to know if I would have had the same result if a woman had said that to me. Steve is a registered member of Gmail, so I assume they would have access to his name, maybe gender, and other demographic information.

In all seriousness, this would be an interesting move for Google and its advertisers: evaluating phrases and the context of the conversations in which they are used. I have never had a male friend of mine say "isn't that just adorable" without risking a shoulder punch. But if my great aunt Evelyn said that about a picture of my dog, it would be a different story.

Extracting the context of phrases based on the demographic using the phrase...now THAT's something! I guess they could also extract a searcher's location (based on IP) and give custom results based on local dialects.

I'll be interested to see where Google and custom advertisers take this...