Slashdot Mirror
Google Backpedals On Turn-By-Turn GPS For iPhone
Smurf writes "Last October Google's Vic Gundotra announced that Google would bring turn-by-turn GPS navigation to the iPhone: 'However, Google is working with Apple on bringing it to the iPhone, and it's not ruling out licensing the software to makers of portable navigation devices used in cars throughout the world, said Gundotra, vice president of engineering at Google for mobile and developers.'
Nevertheless, after such plans were confirmed during a press conference in London yesterday, today the 'Don't be Evil' company backpedaled on them: '"We did not say we would bring it to iPhone, we said to date we've had it on Android and that in the future it may come to other platforms, but did not confirm this will be coming to iPhone at all," a Google spokesperson told PCWorld.'"
Apple is suing Googles allies, and is a rival to the Android platform. Why would Google want to help them by giving people a reason to stay locked into the iPhone when they can just get an Android phone instead? What does Google gain from people using its free apps on other platforms?
Don't be evil company did this. Don't be evil company did that.
It's like you are trying to force a contrast between Google and not-evil. Sorry if they're not the knight in shining armor from the land of dreams, but they're still a long way ahead of the competition.
Make turn by turn for the iPhone, but make it so that it directs users to drive off cliffs. Imagine the look on their faces when they realize what just happened!
I don't understand why all mobile makers are so touchy about turn-by-turn navigation.
When you've paid for the map data, and got GPS hardware in your device, it seems crazy not to implement turn by turn navigation, since the added software development cost is pretty minimal.
I suspect the problem is more of a licensing one - for example, when turn by turn navigation came out for android, it was US only for a while. A hack existed to enable it in the rest of the world, but that was soon stopped by google. Only later did it get released for the rest of the world.
Considering that it worked with a hack, it can't have been a softwatre issue that was preventing worldwide release - the only possibility is that licensing and company politics was getting in the way. Maybe people like tomtom get exclusive rights to do navigation on map data, and therefore while google has rights to use the maps, they don't have rights to do turn by turn directions with them?
As much as I like Google for all it's well-built, low-annoyance stuff, I have to admit there is just a fundamental, structural problem with companies - they need lots of income to keep going. I myself run, opened and closed a few... All planetary data being owned by a company is going to be a problem. But it's our own fault for directing all our attention, energy, and monies to companies, instead of community owned projects. For example there is Open Street Map there to prove that we can build stuff we own all by ourselves, no companies involved, thank you very much. Where we get salaries or monies to pay for bills and expenses is a problem, but problems always have many solutions. Open source civil engineering perhaps...
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
that it is Apple which has caused this change in direction.
Google's Android apps are written predominantly in Java. Apple recently made an edict that all iPhone apps must be developed in some form of C (or Javascript, but that's not Java).
So, Google would now be required to completely rewrite the app. No wonder they're "decommitting."
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
"Don't be evil company did this. Don't be evil company did that."
I am one of the crazy people on Slashdot to question Google's "don't be evil" motto ending up -1 several times along with tinfoil hat jokes but I really fail to understand what kind of "evil" to reject sparing time and huge amount of money for a possibly rejected application.
Google really did good for mobile this time, at least some people from Apple will figure some companies doesn't like to be treated like a potential virus author and porn distributor.
Navteq belongs to Nokia
Hmmm the plot thickens. Nokia does have a major axe to grind with apple. If all google maps come from a company owned by nokia you could see them not agreeing to lic them to google for use on apple.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I know it's popular to bash Apple these days but if you recall, Google gained inside knowledge of the iPhone from their close ties with Apple. They broke those ties and created Droid. Apple denied google's app after that fact. Tit for Tat. Google is hardley innocent here no matter what open platform they develop.
As to how they treat developers, the rules are posted and any who wander into questionable areas have to accept that thy may be rejected. All to often we hear someone submitted an app that they knew duplicated functionality or violated guidlines in some way then they fain shock when it's rejected. The simple truth is that the App store has millions of customers which is a powerfully draw for a very easy distribution system. Most of the hundreds of thousands of apps are are approved without issue. We only hear about the rejected ones.
As a final point, there is no pre-approval for apps. I don't know where you heard that but you were mislead.
A) Google has been developing Android for years. They purchased the company who initially developed Android before the release of the first iPhone. Apple got it's panties in a knot when google finally released it.
B) Maps is definitely not developed in C, C++ and Objective C, so getting the code to run on an iphone would violate their approval policies.
C) No sane development shop should be developing on the iPhone platform anyway. When an arbitrary and capricious bureaucracy can kill your income stream at a whim and has been shown to do so on a regular and increasingly common basis, the level of risk there is unreasonable. Releasing an iPhone app is a solid reason for your company's stock to go /down/, as it shows that the management team is reckless with a company's resources.
D) It always galls me that iPhone users seem to have some sort of feeling of entitlement towards getting everything they want. Google doesn't do /free/ turn by turn for your OS and that makes them evil? Get over yourselves. You are not entitled to google making anything for free for you.
Google not making a free app that many companies sell for hundreds of dollars on an OS that explicitly bans them from reusing their code developed by a business that has been shown to be highly hostile to them may be the dumbest reason I've ever see floated for them having violated "don't be evil".
- The unexamined life is not worth leading -
Google created "Android", which is a mobile OS.
No, it was created by Android, Inc., which Google later bought. If you're going to be pedantic about it...
Android is not like iPhone OS in very many ways. It's a competitor sure, but tit for tat is petty childish stuff. Wanting to make their own system because they think they can do better is hardly a sin.
No, they aren't doing it because they think they can do better. They're doing it because they want to get their ads on the increasingly lucrative smartphone market.
Saying they deserve punishment for it is, frankly, wrong. Apple approved, then unapproved Google's app because they wanted to make their own (I forget which app it was, exactly, I recall it being a big deal though).
First off, Apple didn't approve, then unapprove, Google Voice. And no, Apple did not make their own Google Voice app (or Apple Voice app, or anything like that). They didn't approve it because it was designed to replace the core phone functionality of the iPhone, which is very consistent with Apple's previous actions.
But all that aside, it's extremely ironic that you say Apple shouldn't retaliate against Google for Android, but that Google should retaliate against Apple for not approving Google Voice.
Rather than compete in their own marketplace, they decided to stifle the competition so their app would be the only option. That is just plain evil.
Name one such app that Apple has in the App Store that they refuse competing apps for. The only thing they do that is even similar to what you are saying is they don't approve apps that replace certain fundamental functions of the iPhone. This isn't due to competition, but due to wanting to ensure a specific, consistent user experience that has a certain level (to Apple, at least) of quality. You may not agree with their decision to do things like this, but it's worked well for them, and it's absolutely absurd to call it "evil".
So it sounds like Google has simply said "Fine, if you don't want to work with us, why should we work with you?" What it means is now pretty much everything but the iPhone will have the best free turn-by-turn navigation system on the planet. Way to go Apple!
Yawn. If the single biggest knock against Apple is that they don't have Google's GPS Nav app, Apple is still coming out ahead in the game.
Even with all that, Google didn't say they *won't* release their app for the iPhone, and from a business standpoint, it would be counterproductive for them to specifically *not* create one. The reason is that they will be deliberately missing out on revenue. No one (in any statistically relevant number) is going to buy an Android phone over an iPhone solely due to the lack or presence of Google's GPS Nav app. So Google may be able to get a few more ads on a few more Android phones, while simultaneously giving up on a *load* of ads on tons of iPhones.
And if your entire business folds on a single set of apps on a single platform, you reap what you sow.
If you are making money on software, you make a commercial decision based on the potential return. I'm not necessarily agreeing with Apple's decision to limit the language you can use (I think it is a little silly to be honest), but you have to work with the landscape in front of you.
MS did it with DirectX - an interface that was exclusive to Windows. If you wanted your game to work well on Windows, you used DirectX, and of course you did because of the installed base of Windows users. (and ignoring the graphics side of it, since there is obviously OpenGL, but there's more to it than just graphics - it handles controller input and so on, and it's a no brainer to use on Windows - your game will have better performance if you do use it). So now if you want a multiplatform game, you need to run two codebases.
The iPhone is a similar beast. Like it or loathe it, it has a large share of the market (large enough that writing apps for it as a mobile apps developer is a no brainer), so you work with the restrictions because the rewards are so high.
The GP was asserting that any company that devoted resources to developing for this highly lucrative market was "reckless" and should be a good indication for their stock price (I guess he assumes all companies are traded on the stock market) should go down because of it.
I am not advocating single platform development, merely the ludicrous assertion that developing apps for the iPhone was somehow a crazy business decision. Clearly the mobile market is booming right now, which is excellent - with a decent choice of competing operating systems in the iPhone OS, Android and WM. Anyone wanting to seriously make money in that area should definitely be looking at all avenues, even if it does mean your code is not quite as simple as you like - it's only natural that the competing smartphone interests will attempt to differentiate themselves. It may be a crappy move on Apple's parts, but they hold the keys to a lucrative pot of gold.