Apple to revamp .Mac with Google partnership

Apple's online services currently offered under the .Mac brand will be revamped with the help of a an Apple-Google partnership, sources told MacScoop.

The revamped .Mac service will rely on Google's infrastructure and should bring better integration with Mac OS X. In addition, more services and a lot more storage space should be offered to subscribers.

Web publishing, photo-casting, online storage, e-mail, community, sync and backup services are currently offered in the .Mac package for a $99 yearly subscription. All of these services must currently fit into 1GB of storage, expandable with additionnal fees.

The company should remain on an ad-free paid service but could present a new pricing scheme along with the service's revamp.

But, the Apple-Google partnership is expected to go even further, with Apple letting Mac users choose between Google's free services and .Mac at similar level of integration with Mac OS X.

The Wired blogger, fvogelstein, who bet on such a move last week may be right after all. He expected Apple to announce a "cloud offering" in partnership with Google.

Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs, recently aknowledged that the current .Mac offering isn't very competitive: "I couldn't agree with you more and we will make up for lost time in the very near future." answered Jobs to Walt Mossberg, during this year's All Things Digital Conference.

First rumours of a partnership between Apple and Google appeared when Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt joined Apple's board of members last year.

The new .Mac service may be announced during this Monday's World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC).