Syncing Android Contacts With GMail
When you get a new phone - or a new service provider for that matter - one of the most annoying things in the world is making sure your contacts are up to date. The Official Google Mobile Blog made a post today explaining how Android syncs your contacts with GMail to ensure the most painless and seamless process possible:
The whole syncing with Google/Gmail thing is great and all… unless GMail isn’t your primary account and/or you don’t keep all your contacts in Gmail. Sure… its awesome if you’re already an avid Google user but can be irritating otherwise.
However, it does give you a good system moving FORWARD and thats part of Google’s plan with this whole Android thing…. to get you engrained in Google’s services and at some point become reliant/dependent on them. Because lets face it - if you switch back to a phone that DOESN’T have Android later on… aren’t you recreating the same problem?
So the idea is for Google to become your hub for communication with the world and to be honest, its a great strategy. Lets not pretend its totally revolutionary or anything. Afterall, pretty much every carrier offers a contact backup system (although they are paid) but it usually is easy to simply port your contacts from one phone to another.
Android however, offers a new level of integration between your contacts, calendar, address book and all that jazz. Thats the idea. To get a new level of effectiveness from your mobile form. It comes at the expense of being more reliant on Google. At least they make it easy to become reliant on them as opposed to someone else (or nobody at all).
Here is the “new level” of effectiveness we’re talking about:
So there you have it - 2 way syncing of your data in real-time. From your phone to your computer and your computer to your phone, everything is consistent and up to date. Me likey.
I’m not a huge GMail user right now. To be honest, I WANT to make the switch but just feel anchored to my Yahoo account. This is what will push me to do the legwork to GET IT DONE. Because as you can clearly see… GMail, Android and other services combine to offer you more.
And that my friends… is mobile synergy.
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There is nothing stopping other companies like Yahoo! and Microsoft from creating their own androind apps that integrate / replace the existing contact list and calendaring functionality to give the same seamless syncing capabilities.
Great point.
But it DOES give Google an inherent advantage. The same way IE has an advantage by shipping by default on Windows even though people are free to download FireFox, Chrome, Opera, etc….
I think thats the point of them giving Android away. They get the defaults, which is huge. Next step, get more phones out with Android.
I am concerned about this FORCED integration into gmail - hurts the “Dont Be Evil” credo - as you NEED to have or create a gmail account upon initiating the G1.
What happens when gmail goes down, like it had for approximately a day recently - http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/10/cloud-computing-reality-check-gmail-goes-down-for-a-day
What will happen to the load as Android takes off as this will be a frustration point for synching if not hindering the phone’s performance overall.
^While I think being “forced” to have a Gmail account to use Android raises some privacy concern’s you’re fine if the service goes down.
(I put “forced” in quotes because you don’t HAVE to buy one after all.)
Your contacts, mail, and calendar appts are all copied from “the cloud” and stored locally on the device. So any changes you make if/when Gmail is offline will be replicated to your account once the service is back online.
Make sense?
They’re not forcing you to get a Gmail account. If you don’t want a Gmail account then don’t use Android as an OS. The idea that Google would spend all this money creating a free OS and then let you use a bunch of competitors products, when there are Google options, is laughable. The whole point of Android is to get people using Google you dolt.
@ Gav
The dolt reference is harsh.
Android’s main purpose is NOT to advance Gmail (tho an nice ancillary effect for them) but to get more people online on a more chronic basis thus a greater online and mobile advertising stream for them.
The point I was making is that this harkens back to when IE was a forced inclution with Microsoft OS’ which went to court and then forced to be an option since it was determined that it essentially elbowed out competition.
Of course Microsoft wanted their OS to be the gateway to their Office suites, browsers, etc but for fair competition you need to provide options.
Google is NOT providing an option to using its gmail service when using Android - I sense another lawsuit to force the gmail account to be optional as the mobile OS competition heats up.
This is my point as it parallels Microsoft’s former approach of being a “gateway drug” to create dependance onto all of its services which in turn becomes monopolistic.
The purpose of the gmail account is simply to be your “backend” account. It’s the same way the sidekick service works (Andy Rubin’s last startup). You *must* have a backend account for the device’s backend server functionality to work.
You have a backend service account (johndoe). This name also became your device’s push email account (johndoe@tmail.com). The device logs into this account for remotely storing your data. You then have a desktop interface to access that data (emails, contacts, notes, calendars, photos, etc..) You could also send emails, create new notes, calendars, etc… all from tmobile.com. The data would sync back and forth between cloud and device.
Andy simply took this platform idea and instead of building something from scratch, he used google’s server powerhouse running their existing services.
I don’t think the goal here is force you into using google’s suite of services, but rather it was simply an existing backend service they could use instead of building a new one that would essentially do the exact same thing.