When Google announced what is clearly the best car navigation application on any mobile today, it didn’t just take a swipe at GPS navigation companies such as Garmin and TomTom. It took a swipe at Apple.
Beyond the advanced features of the Google Maps Navigation app (voice search, crowdsourced traffic data, Street View navigation), what makes the app noteworthy is that it launched on Google’s own Android phones first rather than on the iPhone. By doing so, Google is putting Apple on notice that it is no longer reserving its best apps for the iPhone.
So let me get this straight... Google, who now makes cell phone software, is supposed to be expected to port its products to the iPhone first, before making it available on its own platform? Ridiculous. It's completely reasonable that a company design for its own platform and port it to another later. It's doing the same with Chrome, although it released it for the PC before the Mac to get the PC geeks - the ones who would most easily switch to their forthcoming Chrome OS and evangelize for it - excited. Apple did the same with iTunes and Safari.
This is but the latest sign of a growing rift between Apple and Google. A couple years ago, when the iPhone first launched, Google and Apple had a strong partnership. At the time, Google CEO Eric Schmidt described the relationship as so close that it was akin to merging “without merging. Each company should do the absolutely best thing they can do every time.” Google supposedly didn’t need to creat its own phone, because it could simply create software for the iPhone. And, in fact, some of the best apps on the iPhone—Mail, Maps, YouTube, Search—were developed by Google.
Only two years later, Apple and Google no longer have such a cozy relationship. A new Android phone is now launching every other week, it seems. Feeling the competitive threat, Apple started blocking Google apps such as Google Voice and Latitude from getting on the iPhone, and Schmidt stepped down from Apple’s board (although there were also other reasons for that having to do with antitrust scrutiny).
First of all, Google isn't creating it's own phone. It's creating a software platform for mobile devices that phone carriers are using increasingly to power their phones (which is also increasingly the shortfall of Android phones.) Google is a software company. All they're doing is what they do. At least, so far, they've had the good sense to stick to that. Hopefully, they've learned something from Microsoft's mistakes. It's very tough to be Apple - that is, to make beautiful hardware and great software. Most companies have a tough enough time doing one or the other. But if there's one company that could do it - it would probably be Google. I'm just sayin'.
Also, Apple didn't block the Google apps because they were Google apps. It's been well documented that Apple had a problem with the UI in the Google apps and the way they changed the navigation scheme to mimic core functions of the iPhone OS in a non-iPhoney way. They've blocked thousands of other apps for doing the same thing.
And as noted, Schmidt stepped down under anti-trust pressure, not because of a rift with Apple.
So Apple starts to back away from letting Google take over the iPhone with all the best apps by rejecting them. And now we have Google’s response: a big middle finger. If Apple is going to make it hard to get on the iPhone, then Google will stop giving Apple its best apps first and use them to make its own Android platform more appealing.
Let's keep in mind here the timeline. Google develops and releases Android. Then a year later, the Google Voice app is rejected. It was Google who gave the finger first by developing Android. But they wanted in on the action. It's understandable. I'm not saying it's a tit-for-tat thing - I don't think it is - but let's be honest about how things really went down. The timeline is important.
And let's also keep in mind that the Google Voice app was rejected following Google using it's own API calls in its Google Search app for the iPhone. Google did it because it was Google and I think Apple was looking closer at their apps the next time around for any shenanigans. Apple took a lot of heat for approving an app using private APIs that other developers didn't have access to.
Apple is in a terrible position here because the future of mobile apps are Web apps, and Google excels at making those. Apple needs Google, it’s most dangerous competitor in the mobile Web market, to keep building apps for the iPhone. Google would be foolish not to since the iPhone still has the largest reach of any modern Web phone. But it will no longer be a priority.
Let's just be honest here. Everyone needs Google. Everything on every platform is built around Google these days, which I find dangerous and is why I'm not all over the Google bandwagon like a lot of people.
The sad thing is that Apple has been here before—with Microsoft. In the late 1990s, Apple had to beg Microsoft to keep building Office for Macs. Now it may be in the same position with Google. There may be more than 85,000 apps in the App Store, but it is only a handful which actually drive purchases. If Google Maps Navigation becomes one of those types of killer apps, Apple might need to do some begging first before Google goes through effort to make it for the iPhone.
Only a handful drive purchases? Has the author bothered to check out an Apple earnings report? Watch a keynote, maybe? People are buying apps like water. And most of the paid apps are games, which have nothing to do with Google.
Apple doesn't need to grovel at Google's feet. They are strategic partners, both of whom make a similar product, but with differences. Just like Apple and Microsoft. As of this morning, you can still but Microsoft Office for the Mac. Microsoft doesn't kill Office for the Mac because they make money - a lot of money - by making it. And so it goes with Google. They make a ton of money from the iPhone platform, but from search, not from selling software.
And as for Apple and Microsoft in the '90s... Apple had to get in bed with Microsoft because at the time it was its only hope. The perceived animosity between the two companies - at the time - was mostly generated by Apple users, and the hard-core users at that. The real reason Apple went to Microsoft was because it needed a quick infusion of cash while it got back on its feet. Back then, it made pretty crappy, unpopular products with a dwindling market share. That argument can't be made for the iPhone.
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