Google Sync: Now with push Gmail support
Earlier this year, we launched Google Sync which allows you to synchronize your Gmail Contacts and Google Calendar with your iPhone, Windows Mobile, and S60 devices. Today, we're adding Gmail support to Google Sync for iPhone, iPod Touch and Windows Mobile devices.
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the completion of a sync rollout Google began piecemeal: contacts syncing arrived on BlackBerry first in November 2008, then Contacts-and-Calendar sync reached iPhone, Windows Mobile and S60 devices earlier this year. Today Gmail itself joins the channel, so mail, calendar and address book update without manual refresh on three of the four major smartphone platforms.
The timing matters competitively: comScore put Gmail past AOL Email into third place among U.S. webmail services just weeks ago, and Google had already shipped a dedicated Gmail interface for the iPhone back in January 2008. Push delivery closes the last functional gap between Gmail and the native mail clients that ship with these phones — and TechCrunch's coverage frames it pointedly as something the iPhone got despite Apple rather than because of it.
First-order effects
- iPhone, iPod Touch and Windows Mobile users running Google Sync get new mail delivered instantly instead of on a polling interval, putting Gmail's mobile experience on par with the built-in mail clients of those devices.
- Windows Mobile handset makers gain a credible alternative to the platform's own ActiveSync-dependent mail setup for Google accounts, straight from the account holder rather than through carrier or OEM configuration.
Second-order effects
- Apple and Microsoft face their platforms' most-used webmail service being served by Google's own client software on their hardware, which raises the cost of leaving mail as an OS-controlled feature — RIM's BlackBerry, where sync landed earliest, shows the pattern Google is replicating across platforms.
- Yahoo Mail and AOL, the services Gmail just displaced in the U.S. rankings, now compete against an offering whose mobile delivery is technically superior on rival devices, pressuring them to match push sync on the same handsets.
Third-order effects
- If Google keeps extending one sync stack platform by platform, smartphones drift toward thin clients for cloud services, with the account provider rather than the OS vendor controlling the mail, calendar and contacts experience.
- Platform gatekeepers lose a lever: when a third party can deliver core functionality like push email regardless of what the operating system exposes, device makers' control over default services weakens — a structural shift TechCrunch's 'no thanks to Apple' framing captures.
The trend: Cloud email providers are pushing server-side sync onto every major smartphone platform, shifting the mail experience from the device's native client to the service's own.