Hacker News Reader

Comment by salman89 | Hacker News Reader

I disagree.

PR move wise, they've already won the PR battle. Everybody who owns an iPhone 5 or everyone who has considered buying an iPhone 5 now knows that Google (and now Android) has a superior maps offering. By offering a Google Maps app on the iPhone, it just gives customers one reason less to stick with Android.

It will be hard for Google to prove the anti-competitiveness of the App store. It would be quite interesting though - Android has the ability to use different App stores, while Apple certainly does not. It sounds unfair, but I wonder if a court feels the same way.

Pretty sure Apple will be at a disadvantage for years regardless. They've never been a data company as it is, and there's no reason to believe that they could suddenly go out and put together their own maps like Google has done. Better maps does not necessarily equate to having more usage data either.

View on HN

They've won the current PR battle, but if they build a Google Maps for iOS, they will win the next PR battle.

If Apple is reluctant to approve a Google Maps app, and Google claims that they have the app ready and waiting but Apple won't approve it, customers will be pissed. This would put even more pressure on Apple.

Google could absolutely prove anti-competitiveness of the App store, by simply releasing the app that existed on iOS5. If it's the exact same app, with no new features, Google could ask the question why it was good enough for iOS5, but not iOS6. If Apple is restricting its availability simply because Apple has their own maps app, it could definitely be shown as being anti-competitive, and if the DOJ or FTC started to investigate this, Apple would be in heaps of trouble. Apple would be stupid to risk getting a decision forced down their throats by the government, a la Microsoft.

The one thing that Google may be doing is waiting until after Thanksgiving or Christmas in order to release their new App. They might be letting the bad press over Maps could hurt sales of iPhone 5, and then releasing an app after January.

"Google could absolutely prove anti-competitiveness of the App store, by simply releasing the app that existed on iOS5"

I was under the impression that Apple was the one that wrote that app, and they just sourced all the map data from Google.

I guess I'm just failing to see what Google has to gain, and I feel that they have more to lose.

Right now they have gained a key competitive advantage in the minds of consumers. Even iPhone fanboys will have a hard time arguing that Google does not have a better maps app.

What will they have to gain by proving the App store anticompetitive? Google will not make any sort of money from the app anyways.

By releasing a Maps app for iPhone, Google will basically giving away for free what Apple had been (likely) paying them for before. How does that make sense?

Nobody knows if apple is paying them and it all seems like it was free for Apple (but would have been renegotiated in 2013). Google makes money from users using google maps, not by apple paying google to use google maps.

http://www.quora.com/How-much-does-Apple-pay-Google-to-use-t...

  > Everybody who owns an iPhone 5 or everyone who has
  > considered buying an iPhone 5 now knows that Google
  > (and now Android) has a superior maps offering.

No. First of all new maps is feature of iOS6 which is no in hands of more than 50% of iOS users not feature of iPhone 5. Second, there are other places in the world where new maps app is as good or better than old one was. And we finally got turn-by-turn navigation.

  > They've never been a data company as it is

They've never been mobile phone makers before iPhone too, remember? "PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They're not going to just walk in". Let's not forget their map-related acquisitions and partnership with companies in the field.

I buy that the maps is a feature of iOS6, but remember that iOS5 doesn't run on the iPhone 5 (AFAIK). This means that the maps feature becomes part of the purchasing decision.

Would love to see the number of iPhone users in the markets where the new maps app is as good or better. I would go further and say this doesn't matter. A map application is only useful if it works all the time, and if you have the confidence that it will always work.

They had not made a phone before, but they were still a consumer hardware company. I don't think its fair to say that they can now just become a legitimate mapping company. NAVTEQ, TomTom, Google, etc, have spent hundred of thousands of man hours developing those expertise.

There's a difference between "They're not going to just walk in" before they've tried and "They're not going to just walk in" after they've tried and slipped on a banana peel. One is a prediction, the other is a statement of fact.

Even if some iPhone 5 buyers are annoyed it will be a couple of years before most of them get another phone. By that time this issue will probably be resolved. The marketing hit is to people who upgraded older devices like the 3GS. These users could be looking to buy a new phone in the next six months and Android just became slightly more attractive.

First, for a lot of countries, we're still in the return period for the iPhone 5. Second, even if they couldn't return it and are stuck with a contract, dissatisfied iPhone 5 owners can still sell their almost brand new phone and get something else (and that wouldn't be good for the iPhone 5 or iOS in the long run).

People really love their iPhones. I find is barely believable that a large number of people will change that based on maps alone.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com