As rumors go, this is a pretty solid one: it seems that Google and Apple will partner, and together, the companies are likely to give .Mac a huge cloud-computing boost.
Google, Apple May Partner On Cloud Computing
“Cloud computing is the hot new thing in the world of technology right now,” writes Wired’s Fred Vogelstein. “Apple makes beautiful hardware, but it hasn’t improved on .Mac, its cloud based storage offering, in years. You get 1GB of storage on .Mac for $100. That’s laughable in an era where you can get double that for nothing.”
But that’s exactly where Google would come in. “We’re a perfect back end to the problems that they’re trying to solve,” Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, told Vogelstein. “They have very good judgment on user interface and people. But they don’t have this supercomputer (that Google has), which is the data centers. What they have is a manufacturing business that’s doing quite well.”
And if the word of one CEO isn’t good enough for you, Vogelstein has collected a comment from the other one, as well. “In response to a question last week he actually agreed, adding ‘stay tuned,’” writes the Wired author.
So it appears that finding out what Google and Apple are up to is more of a waiting game than anything. People such as Michael Parekh and MG Siegler will be glad to know that an answer could come as soon as Monday, at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference 2007.
