Friday, July 11, 2008

MobileMe and Google Contacts Sync

NOTE: This link continues to get some of the highest traffic on my blog. This post was written in 2008 and the information contained below may therefore be dated.

No one seems to have figured out a good sync for Google Contacts until now. I haven't yet tested it thoroughly but Apple's MobileMe does seem to successfully sync Google Contacts, even my "Google Apps" contacts.

(See my post about another good Google Contacts sync, with Salesforce LINK.)

I am using a PC not a Mac. Downloading iTunes 7.7 puts a new item in Control Panel called MobileMe Preferences. That utility gives you the option to sync your MobileMe contacts with one of: Google Contacts, Outlook, Yahoo, or Windows Contacts. Trying it out of course requires you to pay the $100 a year subscription for Me.com (formerly Mac.com). Also, because Google captures every one of the addresses you e-mail to as a contact, you'll have a lot of "No Name" contacts in your MobileMe contacts. Looks to me like it would take me years to sort through my list of those . . .

AND once, you've done this, who cares? Well, you would care if you use Google and have an iPhone, but otherwise, for a PC user, does it really matter that you can sync Google Contacts over to .Me? They are both in the cloud rather than otherwise accessible.

And no calendar sync for Google Calendar! Only option is Outlook!

UPDATE for Mac users

As far as I can tell, on the Mac there is NO Google Contacts Sync! Does this mean that if you (1) temporarily set up .Me on a Windows machine, (2) set Google Contacts to Sync with .Me contacts, (3) set it to happen automatically, that you'll be all set or does that Windows machine have to be on for the sync to be activated even though all the sync is happening in the cloud (.Me <> Google)?? Is the ONLY way to get your Mac Addressbook to sync with Google contacts to have a Windows machine producing this protocol?

UPDATE 2

Apparently there IS an option for Macs, located within the OS X 10.5.3 Address Book application. See here LINK and LINK

4 comments:

Nick Cacace said...

You only get the option to sync with Google if you have an iPhone tethered to that computer.

Unknown said...

Here's how to sync to Google Contacts if you don't have an iPhone or iPod Touch (LifeHacker): LINK

Unknown said...

I use Thunderbird and the Zindus
Google contact sync addon. It's been syncing my contacts with Google for a few months now without a hitch.

Unknown said...

Google Calendar now supports CalDAV, and I have just got it working with iCal, and I assume there is something similar for Windows applications.