MobileMe and Google offer similar capabilities, but which one is better? Each has its fans and detractors, and while there’s no single answer that’s right for everyone, you should keep several factors in mind when making your decision.
Price
Support
Google offers no direct or personalized support for its free products, forcing users to rely on Google’s Help Center and public help forums to solve problems. On the other hand, Apple offers not only online support for MobileMe, but also the option to speak to an expert on the phone for free.
Ease of use
Apple has gone out of its way to simplify the process of syncing your data with all your OS X and iOS devices—and has integrated MobileMe support into not only OS X but also iLife, iWork, and various other desktop and mobile applications—whereas with Google’s services much more manual effort is required.
Features
Compatibility
MobileMe, as an Apple product, is designed for optimal compatibility with other Apple products. Some Google services rely on different standards, and as a result may yield unexpected results with Apple software. For example, Google Contacts offers a single Name field, whereas Address Book gives you separate fields for first, middle, and last names; so syncing may occasionally duplicated entries, with one copy having text in the wrong fields.
Privacy
Numerous people have expressed concerns about Google’s privacy policies, and have balked at the idea that the contents of their personal e-mail messages may be searched and indexed in order to display relevant ads on the Gmail Website. Although I think most of these concerns are overblown, it nevertheless pays to consider each company’s privacy policies carefully before committing your personal data to one service or the other.
For most people, these factors tend to tip the scales in favor of MobileMe. However, neither choice is wrong, and nothing prevents you from using both services at the same time—or relying on each for the features it does best.
[Senior contributor Joe Kissell is the senior editor of TidBits and the author of the e-book Take Control of MobileMe (TidBITS Publishing, 2010)].