Is Google slowly creeping up on .Mac?

Hawk Wings found an interesting post from Nick Starr that briefly outlines how Google is doing a decent job of matching up to the offerings of .Mac. While Nick has a good point with o erving that some of Google's key products are similar to .Mac's offerings, such as the Blogger/Pages combo (aka iWeb) and their recently released Browser Sync exte ion for Firefox (aka Safari syncing), I think what a lot of people either keep mi ing, don't know or simply don't care about is the a lication integration that the power of .Mac offers by being baked into Mac OS X. Let's also not forget .Mac's syncing exte ibility that lets 3rd parties join .Mac's party; my copies of Yojimbo and Tra mit can keep notes and FTP accounts (re ectively) synchronized between my Macs via the built-in sync engine. Going further, other 3rd party a licatio can take advantage of this integration, such as Quicksilver's ability to catalog and keep the same contacts from Addre Book on multiple Macs just a shortcut key away; with the flick of my wrist I can find a contact (or multiple) and either copy their information to my cli oard, open their card for editing or fire off an email without even touching a Mail me age or a browser window. With iWeb I can drag and drop an iPhoto album of 100 images and have them all optimized and ready to publish to the web, complete with a sexy slideshow - oddly, I don't see a similar exte ion for Firefox. The list could go on, but I'm sure you're already either nodding your head or typing up a flame comment, so I'll are you.

Taking a step back from all this, it sounds as though services like Google's are simply striking a chord with a few unique killer features that are enough to entice some users (and, obviously, their price tag can't hurt either). But ultimately, I simply think it's too much of a leap to label some loosely entangled 'Web 2.0' services as a complete replacement for the sheer power, ease of use and 'no waiting for a refresh' a ects of desktop a licatio and operating systems that many users might be mi ing out on.