I wonder if Apple are getting ready to part ways a little with Google on some of the features on the iPhone, such as Google Maps....?
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Apple Acquired Mapping Company Placebase in July
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You are incorrect. AdMob targets mobile web...not just full web pages. Hence their name AdMob. From the article "AdMob serves ads for more than 9,000 mobile Web sites and 3,000 applications around the world."
Reality
The reality is that Google is no longer a partner but a direct competitor. A company can not, and should not, rely on a competitor for any service or parts for their key products.
Google's focus is now on Android and the software features for their phones. Apple is now secondary (or worse).
Watch for the replacement of Google Maps on future releases....possibly 4.0 is my guess (June '10). Google Maps will be moved to App Store for anyone to voluntarily download....but it won't be a base App anymore.....and won't be the default Map for other programs to use.
The reality is that Google is no longer a partner but a direct competitor. A company can not, and should not, rely on a competitor for any service or parts for their key products.
Google's focus is now on Android and the software features for their phones. Apple is now secondary (or worse).
Watch for the replacement of Google Maps on future releases....possibly 4.0 is my guess (June '10). Google Maps will be moved to App Store for anyone to voluntarily download....but it won't be a base App anymore.....and won't be the default Map for other programs to use.
You might want to have a look at how Ad Mob define what 'mobile web page' is. You should also look at the caveats they publish around why their stats are not representative of overall browsing. The stuff's in their PDF.
The iPhone does well but it's nonsense to say it accounts for 40% of mobile web traffic.
Oh God Noooooooo.... Apple's bring back the GEOport-Modem??????
*sniffle*
*sob*
Noooooooo-oooooo-ooooooo--o-o-o--oo-o-o--ooooooooooo............*
Ok seriously, who else had a flashback to the Geoport Modem days when they saw the story???
That blasted little thing caused me to have to return a Sonnet G3 Daughter Card because of compatibility issues so my PowerMac 6500/225 stayed just that.... 225Mhz and NOT G3.
*sniffle*
*sob*
Noooooooo-oooooo-ooooooo--o-o-o--oo-o-o--ooooooooooo............*
Ok seriously, who else had a flashback to the Geoport Modem days when they saw the story???
That blasted little thing caused me to have to return a Sonnet G3 Daughter Card because of compatibility issues so my PowerMac 6500/225 stayed just that.... 225Mhz and NOT G3.
A competitor that is open to sharing and even developing full featured applications for the iPhone. They don't have to let Apple use Google Maps, Youtube, GV, Latitude for free, but they are there creating these apps for Apple for free. They are pretty generous competition.
I remember when they rejected the GV app someone at Google jokingly tweeted something like "We removed Apple from Google's search engine." I mean that may not seem like a lot but you could see how it would be weird if you google'd anything apple related and never got a link to their site.
But really if they want to make a competing app to google maps fine, just give me the option to use competitors apps as well. Not to mention Google seems to be at the front line of web based apps and communication tools...why fight them.
The problem is that Apple doesn't like its users to have options. They'll reject the Google map app because it 'duplicates functionality already found on the iPhone.' Where have we heard this before?
A competitor is a competitor is a competitor, no matter how "nice" you see Google the fact is Google is a business that is directly competing with Apple with their Android OS, soon to be Google OS, and Google Chrome.
For the record, Google Maps / Youtube on the iPhone came before Android, it was a partnership, not a "favor". Hell, why wouldn't Google want their apps on one of the hottest phones? Just means more "Mindshare" for Google.
No seems to remember that Apple mentioned in a keynote that Google Map tiles were not allowed, by Google, to be used for turn by turn directions. It was a clearly stated limitation of the maps API introduced in iPhone OS 3.0! I am sure limiting developers, and Apple itself, isn't something Apple likes to happen. I bet Apple would love to put turn by turn directions and other advanced mapping features in the iPhone as standard features but because they are limited by Google's policies that simply can't. Bringing mapping in house will clearly free Apple to design the product itself without limitation.
Yes! Apple bought a technology to create/maintain a database of location information.
And, if I read this correctly, the infrastructure to gather data from many disparate sources, and the current data itself.
Coordinates for drawing maps are only a small part of the data. There are over 10,000 other variables such as: median household income; median age; campaign contributions...
Apple has the means of providing custom analytics about "whatever" parameters for "wherever" section of the country.
A map (theirs, googles or anyones) overlayed with analytics is only one means of displaying the data.
*
Hm, could this be the beginning of the end for the Apple/Google relationship?I hope not. They make a great team.
Hopefully they can be competitive to everyone's benefit without the M$ type dirty tricks. Google's new Wave technology is open source and Apple will surely look at that closely.
Google's Chrome OS is a netbook OS. Last time I checked OS X doesn't exist on netbooks unless its a hackintosh. Sure it will run on one, but Apple is not in the netbook market so I don't really see that as a competing product for them. Not if was going to be installed as a full feature OS for all computers that's a different story, but so far, from what I've read, that's not the case.
A free web browser that doesn't exist on OS X isn't really a threat.
Android is really their only competition. Not a very threatening one at the moment but hopefully someday soon.
I'm still curious how this GV FCC thing turns out. Someone is lying. Hopefully something good comes out of all this competition.
One Ring to Rule them All
In the long run I don't think this is something that we will be happy about. I know there are a lot of Apple fanboys here but this is not about starting a flame war. Apple has slowly been "acquiring" software, companies and people. Anyone remember Watson? Where Widgets came from?
I think that it is smart for Apple to want to rely solely on themselves. But, the average customer, the customer that buys tech just for looks and the customers who have to adopt a tech because of family or work will find themselves relying more and more on Apple and slowly stop looking to competitors for options. From a business standpoint, this is freaking awesome," but from a consumer standpoint this is a nightmare. We all know Microsoft does this, but if Google starts doing the same we are risking losing the interoperability we customers have seen since Apple's switch to Intel.
G*d know the cellular phone companies don't want interoperability and look at all these people that are whining about not being able to use the iPhone on Verizon and T-Mobile. It's never going to be on Verizon, ever. Get over it and switch. If you have Verizon you know why: Verizon imposes their own software on phones and they want their own app store and they want everything done their way.
We've all seen examples of what happens when a company does everything on their own. Granted, Apple knows how to make things work the way their customers want and they have a reputation for quality, but let's think more about the future and less about what is good now.
In the long run I don't think this is something that we will be happy about. I know there are a lot of Apple fanboys here but this is not about starting a flame war. Apple has slowly been "acquiring" software, companies and people. Anyone remember Watson? Where Widgets came from?
I think that it is smart for Apple to want to rely solely on themselves. But, the average customer, the customer that buys tech just for looks and the customers who have to adopt a tech because of family or work will find themselves relying more and more on Apple and slowly stop looking to competitors for options. From a business standpoint, this is freaking awesome," but from a consumer standpoint this is a nightmare. We all know Microsoft does this, but if Google starts doing the same we are risking losing the interoperability we customers have seen since Apple's switch to Intel.
G*d know the cellular phone companies don't want interoperability and look at all these people that are whining about not being able to use the iPhone on Verizon and T-Mobile. It's never going to be on Verizon, ever. Get over it and switch. If you have Verizon you know why: Verizon imposes their own software on phones and they want their own app store and they want everything done their way.
We've all seen examples of what happens when a company does everything on their own. Granted, Apple knows how to make things work the way their customers want and they have a reputation for quality, but let's think more about the future and less about what is good now.
And Google Voice is where? What about all the apps that appear to be arbitrarily rejected?
Google Latitude got rejected. Why? Not sure, there are apps like Loopt that do basically the exact same thing. The point is Apple seems to be rejecting Googles apps for reasons it won't tell anyone.
Exactly. Though I suspect Google Voice is a bigger issue than something like Latitude considering what the function of GV really is and how you can exploit it for unlimited calling to everyone.
It makes quite a bit of sense. When Google develops features for iPhone, it also makes them available to other companies and devices. To maintain a competitive advantage, Apple needs home-grown technologies. I would not be surprised if Apple has its own turn-by-turn GPS driving app under development.
Things change ....
For a LONG time, Google was generally viewed as the "search engine king". Apple was more than happy to cozy up with them, since they certainly didn't have their hat in that ring, AND because their big competitor, Microsoft, did.
The thing is though, Google keeps expanding their reach, and they're moving towards being the "information PROVIDER king", as opposed to simply directing you to everyone else's information.
As they've added things like "Google Apps", their own cellphone OS, etc. - they've started stepping on Apple's toes. Apple can't afford to keep pretending they're not competitors with Google when all of this is happening.
For a LONG time, Google was generally viewed as the "search engine king". Apple was more than happy to cozy up with them, since they certainly didn't have their hat in that ring, AND because their big competitor, Microsoft, did.
The thing is though, Google keeps expanding their reach, and they're moving towards being the "information PROVIDER king", as opposed to simply directing you to everyone else's information.
As they've added things like "Google Apps", their own cellphone OS, etc. - they've started stepping on Apple's toes. Apple can't afford to keep pretending they're not competitors with Google when all of this is happening.
I can just see the future now... Apple - Google feud results in Google blocking iPhones from accessing any and all Google websites
on the premise that Apple blocks Android from iTunes.
I know you must be attempting to be funny. But just in case Google can't afford to block anyone access, because they make money only from eyeballs and in this economy they need as many eyeballs as possible.
Also because all of their stuff is open, they're pretty much stuck or face backlash from everyone.
I see Apple Management frowning as we speak about Google Maps being their default map. Google is becoming a 'brickwall' heading into Apple's future products. Especially, since we are seeing Google stepping up their game in hardware.
Google & Apple are becoming two companies who NOW have similar interests when the two companies were so drastically different not too long ago...