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They mention a couple of features that are not just "long exposure" in the post:

* Compensating for moving stars

* "Live viewfinder" during exposure

* Selectively darkening the sky

* Dark current compensation (though that is probably needed for all long-exposure photography...still, not a simple "more exposure" feature)

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I think the point of GP is that astrophotography as demonstrated here is mostly implementable in software. If Google wanted, they could very well produce an app for iPhone that does all of the above.

All easy software implementations. This is not a hardware story.

If they're so easy, why haven't Apple implemented them?

Or at least someone would have come up with an app already, had it been that easy.

Just because it’s easy doesn’t mean users are clamoring for it. I can think of hundreds of things that are easy that apple hasn’t done

It’s hardly a secret that innovation in smartphone cameras is mainly in software now. This software camera innovation is one of, or the, main area that phone manufacturers are competing on at the top end of the market, so characterising it as ‘easy’ seems strange.

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