Google: No Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 apps until use rises
updated 07:06 pm EST, Wed December 12, 2012
No Gmail or Drive apps for MS; Google to focus on Android, iOS
Google won't be rolling out apps for its Gmail or Google Drive apps for Microsoft's Windows 8 or Windows Phone 8 platforms in the near future. This according to the product management director at Google Apps, who says that the company has not seen any indication of interest in apps for the new generation of Windows. Instead, Google is committed to continually growing and improving its app suite on iOS and Android.
Clay Bavor, Google Apps' product management director, spoke with V3 and revealed the search giant's shunning of Microsoft's new platform. Google's typical operating pattern is to get its services onto as many platforms as possible, but given the relative newness of the Windows 8 platform, Google appears to be taking a wait-and-see approach with regard to Microsoft's operating systems before it will commit any resources to reaching customers using devices running the new flavors of Windows.
Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 users, though, will still have Microsoft's own productivity offerings to rely upon, of course. Microsoft's Office offerings are something of a default option among enterprise clients, and are typically interoperable with most of Google's services. Users with a significant amount of material stored on Google Drive, though, will likely find themselves looking for a workaround until Google deems the platform worth the manpower a development team would require.
