Google to change its policy on mobile apps. Native apps to come.
thenextweb.com
thenextweb.com
Since a vocal minority will cry foul and presumably rally support (create a Facebook fan page) if an existing native app like WinMo was dropped, it is a smart long-term strategy to converge to HTML5.
Google's strategy is to get more people using their apps, period. There must be an order of magnitude (or more) difference in how many people play Angry Birds instead of Google Mobile version 0.7.3.5675
Being in the process of currently developing a Facebook app, it seems to me the entire graph is exposed. The only question is permissions and Facebook's willingness to change APIs on a very regular basis (that is a dicey question but rather different).
But "hidden" APIs??
You can find an open source Facebook library here: http://gitorious.org/qfacebook as well as many other places for different languages.
BTW if all you want is to get some users name and birthday, you now have the Yelp apikey ( You did not hear that from me ;)
Facebook runs on C++, but is written in PHP, because it's easier to hire PHP developers. Apps run on ObjC / Java / etc and so that requires more developers, more languages. If it's just web apps instead, they can leverage their existing base of engineers. Certainly their native client for Android seems to be hurting from a lack of technical clout (for example, you can't read message threads if they get too long).
the only interesting part seems to be the "autonomous but with google's resources" development model.
I guess Google itself might make a better Google Reader native client than the web app, but currently all of the 3rd party native clients have some annoying minor problem: some don't have zoom for images, some don't have a "Like" function, some don't display TeX formulas in wordpress math blogs properly, one bizarrely turns the entire text of arXiv feeds into a link; none of the native apps works perfectly on my feeds.
As for Facebook, the native app is not bad but it's noticeably slower than the web app and only let's you like status updates not comments on them. I mainly use the web app but do have the native app to upload photos on occasion (on my previous, camera-less iPod I only used the web app).
Hacker News native apps probably suffer from a lack of API, so maybe it's not fair to mention them, but if one worked properly I'd probably use it. I used to use Michael Grinich's app (I hope I'm remembering his name correctly), but recently it won't let me comment. That together with it being much slower than either actual HN or iHackerNews, made me go web.
Another reason Google has shunned Apple native apps in particular is because of Apple's clear reluctance to accept them given Google's dominant position (case-in-point: Google Voice). If Eric Schmidt is being lined up to become Apple's next CEO then it would be a smart move for Google to pre-empt a more favorable Apple era towards Google
Why on earth do people keep expecting this? Apple's success comes from their fantastic design sense and their leading support. Schmidt gets a bad grade in both those areas. Apple has other people already in the company that could do a better job than Schmidt.
Schmidt's job at Google was to provide "adult supervision" to Larry and Sergey, and keep on top of the executive functions of a publicly listed company.
There is no reason to assume he wouldn't do a good job at that with Apple, leaving folks like Jony to be visionaries.
Access to camera (Picassa, google goggles, etc)
...to name two.
Caching, as it happens is available on html5... Gmail for iPad is cached locally.
Sticking with HTML5 for most stuff was a good idea in theory. It uses less resources (and they already have tons of people that can do JS and HTML), promotes HTML5, means they don't have to deal with Apple's BS, etc.
But the apps were awful (at least as of May, when I switched from iPhone to Android). They felt unnative, had annoying UX at times, and generally sucked. Plus there's a lot of APIs that webapps don't have access to.
The one issue for Google is that those shitty apps might have convinced some people to switch to Android, where the Google apps are perfect. It definitely was a factor in my switch.
Sounds like Mr. Page may have started taking steps to encourage more entrepreneurial spirit in Google. Can you imagine how fun some of those projects will be?