Looking for an app to check your Gmail account or access Google Drive from your new Windows PC or Windows Phone 8 device? Look no further, as Google will likely not churn out dedicated apps for its services on those two platforms for some time to come due to a perceived lack of interest.
"We have no plans to build out Windows apps," said Clay Bavor, product management director at Google Apps, in an interview with v3. "We are very careful about where we invest and will go where the users are but they are not on Windows Phone or Windows 8."
Currently the only two official Google apps offered in the Windows Store is Google Chrome and Google Search. This is likely due to Google wanting to steer users away from Microsoft's own Bing and Internet Explorer 10 which comes packed in the new Windows Modern UI overlay. All other Google services can be accessed the traditional way, or through third-party apps.
During the interview Bavor stressed that there are no plans to bring Gmail and Google Drive to the new Microsoft platforms. Still, if there's enough interest, Bavor said that Google will be willing to adapt. For now, Android and iOS are taking the "brunt" of the company's focus, and that will likely intensify in 2013.
"In 2012 we've laid some of the ground work and really improved the experience of our core apps on mobile devices," he said. "We really see these as the first versions of our mobile experience, though, so we will continue to make big investments in mobile in 2013 with the goal of having beautiful mobile apps."
Google is partially focused on its mobile offerings because the enterprise sector is slowly shifting into the cloud and utilizing multiple devices that access cloud-based data. Executives and staff are turning to laptops, tablets and smartphones in addition to their desktops to remotely access spreadsheets, edit documents and more.
The only way to address this multi-device user is to establish a consistent cloud architecture that delivers data to all devices and keeps the apps up-to-date. But as it stands now, the majority of the businesses will not have upgraded to Windows 8 in 2013 due to the new interface, and the new platform isn't exactly selling like iPads in the consumer sector.
To read the full interview, head here.
