It comes into a class of its own if you are running Mac OS X Leopard (10.5.6) as you can set it up in iTunes to sync with your Gmail contacts. Once you have done this you only need to set up the exchange server on your handset. In my instance I am only using it for my contacts and calendar (which now replaces the My Memova setup). My email is IMAP on the device using Gmail (as I have recently given Google Apps away as no longer needed).

Enabling Push data access on the device ensures your contacts are synced at all times and now means I have one set of contacts, backed up in 3 seperate locations. I can also edit my contacts on any device or App and they are automatically updated on the other. Something I have been after for a while now.

Supporting most popular devices, you can’t go past this as an essential contact management tool.

Visit Google mobile sync

It was this that brought me to notice how much my online daily activities evolve around Google and their products. I spend about 10 hours a day online and outside the daily online duties it is predominantly spent using something designed by Google through the browser or its integration into Firefox.

What are they?

• Google Apps account for my email, docs and calendar.
• Google Reader for my RSS feeds.
• Google Finance for all my market updates, and
• iGoogle for combining them all in the one window.

It does not stop there at the computer either, the iPhone’s most used browser app is Google Apps and Google for the iPhone. read more on the iPhone setup here.

So what’s it all mean? Has Google entrenched themselves that deeply into our daily routine without us noticing that they are about to take over the world and buy out Microsoft next? Hardly! But who knows… What we do know is ‘they’re all over it!’. When somebody builds up enough market share and confidence, you listen and take note when they release something new and in some little way, take warning. As we have learnt from Google in the past, there may very well be bigger and better things around the corner. As usual, I am looking forward to their next big thing. If only I had some of their shares… “Now, where’s that Google Finance page?”.