Google's Beastly Week

Let's look at what Google's Mobile Team has introduced in the past week, from earliest to latest. Check them out. They're all game changers...

1) Gmail Tasks

Tasks lets you easily create and manage to-do lists right in Gmail. Now, you can access and manage your task lists from your phone, too.

2) Google Latitude

Latitude is a new feature of Google Maps for mobile, as well as an iGoogle gadget, that allows you to share your location with your friends and to see their approximate locations, if they choose to share them with you.

3) Google Book Search

Over 1.5 million public domain books in the US (and over half a million outside the US) are now available for perusing on iPhone and Android devices.

4) Google Sync Beta (if Gmail's any indication, this thing will be in beta until 2015).

For iPhone and Windows Mobile devices, Google Sync allows you to get your Gmail Contacts and Google Calendar events to your phone. Once you set up Sync on your phone, it will automatically begin synchronizing your address book and calendar in the background, over-the-air, so you can attend to other tasks.

Google Sync has effectively eliminated the need for MobileMe, pending the push updates to the phone. Notice how Google is using Apple's exchange integration to its advantage. Bottom line: prior to today, my contacts and calendars were stored locally and synced through iTunes. Today, everything's on Google Servers. The world's-a-changing.