First day back to tech and the 6th grade tackled what turns out to be a difficult question: Are Google and Apple friends?

Students agreed that Apple is a computing company and Google is an advertising company.  They don’t compete for hardware (iPhone, computers, iPod, etc) but they DO  fight for software users (Apple sells software, Google gives it away).

Students pointed out that Google’s web browser (Chrome) only works on PC, not on Apple computers.  This makes us think that Apple and Google will work together to steal users from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

However, on January 5th, Google released a piece of software called Picasa for Mac, a direct competitor to iPhoto (the most popular free Mac photo organization/editing software).  What does this mean?  Is Google attacking Apple?

The 6th grade thinks that this will be a tough fight for Google.  Apple computers come with iPhoto already installed, and for people that already use iPhoto, there isn’t a lot of reason to switch.