Google Preps Maps App for Apple iPhones
online.wsj.com
online.wsj.com
This was initially because of the maps degradation, but now I also don't see any reason to actually undertake the upgrade, apart from removing the little notification counter on the setting icon that for some reason I find annoying.
Google makes its money from data/advertising - Android is a hedge to prevent a single dominant player from controlling the flow of data.
In itself, Android isn't necessarily profitable for Google - but it opens the door to their services ecosystem which is profitable.
Not taking advantage of Apple's Maps gaffe would be ignoring a massive chunk of the data pie. And with Nokia hitting the scene with their map services, Google needs to act fast.
Google’s goal with Android is to prevent losing control over mobile platforms. Imagine a world in which Apple and Microsoft are the only two mobile OS vendors and then both decide to make the default search engine in their browsers Bing or something. Google wants to prevent that.
At the moment there is about zero danger of Apple gaining any kind of significant control over mobile platforms that would allow them to do anything like that. It’s not going to happen – and there isn’t even any indication that Apple wants to make it happen. (Even if it were to happen it’s easy enough for Google to pull all their apps.)
Maybe Google’s Android division also has plans to more directly make some money with Android, but I doubt it. Even if they had, though, I doubt that is in any sense a company-wide policy. Their goal is to get the most users to use their services. The maps people want everyone to use their maps, no matter which device they own. If it is possible to easily grab a few million users on Apple devices Google will obviously jump for that.
Sure, but they also want to increase Android's share of the high end of the market and they could also have just let the inferior maps in iOS6 continue to drive prospective iPhone 5 buyers to Android.
But obviously they've weighed their options here and decided that having a presence on iOS is worth more than letting Apple continue to piss off users by hobbling along on its own.
On the one hand, you have people who might otherwise switch to Android to get particular features of the Google ecosystem they want. On the other, you have iOS users who gradually become more invested in the Google ecosystem over time and eventually decide to switch to Android to get "the real thing".
But clearly Google thinks it's a net gain to be on iOS and they have a lot more insight into the details of this deal than we do.
As a side comment, I don't think app exclusivity as user acquisition technique is working anymore. It's an important aspect, but it's part of a larger picture.
> Sure, but they also want to increase Android's share of the high end of the market and they could also have just let the inferior maps in iOS6 continue to drive prospective iPhone 5 buyers to Android.
As useful as maps are to many, and essential to some, there are an awful lot of people for who it is not a descision making difference when speccing up a phone. For them it is a very useful extra on which-ever phone they buy for other reasons.
So for all the noise about how bad Apple's maps are in this itteration I don't think it'll massively affect who buys what in the high-end market on its own, but if Google's maps on iOS6 are significantly better than Apple's maps on iOS6 it is an embarrasment to Apple and it helps cement an idea of qualty in Google's output. That may help sales of high-end Android devices because one of the common reasons for going Apple is the perception (earned in some ways) that Android is a lot less polished nd smooth-working than iOS - having a product on that platform that outperforms the built-in competitor will help fight that automatic perception and perhaps encourge peopel to at least look into the competition when chosing their upgrade/replacement path later on.
tl;dr: it is more about showmanship than any direct sales effect (and if the have most of the code done anyway, it'll not cost them an awful lot to get it tweaked and up on the AppStore).
But yes, they make money indirectly from customers like me who visit their website to buy books so we can read on our iOS devices.
It lets you set different defaults and do so much more (not piracy!) that I couldn't possibly mention it all.
Or that Google would have required Apple to make unacceptable concessions in order to get access to newer features. My personal guess (no strong basis, just a gut feeling) is that Google would have required Apple to include location-based ads in the updated Maps, as well as integrating with other Google location-based services (e.g, Latitude), even where that conflicted with Apple services (e.g, Find My Friends [1]).
[1]: https://www.apple.com/icloud/features/find-my-friends.html
Instead of using Apple PR imagery, they took a picture of an actual iPhone in its natural state.