[Google isn't the only company providing search/maps/ads. In fact, there are other companies that would like to offer as good or better services but can't get in the door because Google has such a great brand and position and mindshare. The fact that Microsoft couldn't even win with bundling search into Windows is mind-blowing.

However, Google's position is only as strong as its client apps. If Apple partnered with another company for default web search, a specialized Maps company, and so on, Google's share of mobile ads would vanish. There isn't that much real demand for Google search. There's demand for search that people think of as Googling. - Dan]

My demanding “openness” Google is guaranteeing access. For the two prongs, they have Android and they have APIs. Google’s Android push is a trojan horse (as we all know). When its working properly, it is a “best practices” implementation of all of Google’s core APIs (and often new ones soon to arrive for partners). It is the showcase for the payload… Google APIs. Android is patient zero. If consumers clamor for its features, Google either provides Android itself to its partner, or in the case of Apple… allows the partner to become a HOST for its APIs. Just as Google Maps on the iPhone have begun showing ads, EVERY API Google employs is highly valuable information. Their “Analytics” program is the killer app that nets them invaluable information about consumers that no other vendor will ever have. In that same way, Google Maps for Mobile… across ALL phones, allows Google to reach a much wider audience. Adobe, with its proprietary Flash technology can only HOPE to cause the type of clamor Google has been able to harness at times… in push for different phones to get with Google technology. Google’s “cloud” is the ultimate “string” attached to any “gift” Google grants a partner. As the API becomes more and more unique, it becomes harder for partners to resist using it, or replace it, if they deem Google as having too much control over their platform and customers.

Apple has spent AMPLE time developing its iPhone environment. They have done a spectacular job they would not want wasted, by having someone provide services that eventually undermine their ability to dictate their own fate. That is the DEATH of innovation.

Decades from now, if companies like Nokia, Blackberry, and others allow Google services in, bit-by-bit, these phones eventually become defacto-Android phones… they are “Google powered” if not in branding. Apple needs a completely FREE hand to operate and does not relish thoughts of Google usurping control and 1st rung deference from its customers. Google Voice, with well managed badges, notifications, voice and voicemail, could EASILY become the default “dialing” app over Apple’s own service. Later, if they tried to improve their own, they might encounter stiff resistance, as customers settle for compromise over lost features.

This is truly an epic battle (for the fate of the Internet), and Apple and Google are waltzing very interestingly. Google’s strategy is at once brutal and relentless. First its search… then its Gmail… then Android… and all of these will eventually fit together into an interesting outcome.

Made me laff very loudly (bastard!)

Cheers

“Google is not MS, who simply photo copies and uses their ill-gotten monopoly to subsidize their other projects”

Well actually they do. They are always using their monopoly to subsidise other projects. Maps Navigation is an example of that. Google is actually in the business now of specifically using the ad/search monopoly to release products would otherwise cost money to buy. Google’s train quite clearly is a) find anything that could push ads b) destroy the existing industry by releasing a free version that pushes ads and c) hope that said industry goes broke creating a vacuum now only fillable by a junked up ad streamer.

Google isn’t in navigation and doesn’t care. Anyone who thinks Google Maps is great really hasn’t had much to do with Google Maps or at least paid any attention.

Google is into ads. A Google turn by turn app, is really an ad by ad app that like a parasite takes over a range of useful technologies and reduces them to naught more than a spam inbox.

Meanwhile said useful technologies are no longer pushed along by their old (defunct) industry cause there is no point (financially) and trying to take the fight back to Google is pointless, why would Tom Tom try and take over the ad business?

Photo-copied using their ill-gotten gains. The copier warms up by paying too much for another companies work and then spends years trying to force the photocopy to present spam while the original features get sporadic and not always useful updates; new features tend to revolve around links to other Google properties and the resulting mess is amazing at ad serving, looks like a dogs breakfast and offers a feature set pulled from a jumble sale.

I have to agree with Daniel, Google wouldn’t know a UI if it smacked them round the chops. They might employ a 100,000 genius mathematicians who spend half their time jumping round the office on nerf balls while spending the other half thinking up new ways to increase the spam deluge; and yet one imagines they have already concluded that a bad interface helps serve more ads while their hapless prey is trying to work out what to do next.

I also totally disagree that Google is unobtrusive, if they have worked out anything in that department it is that “if you give a child a rattle they won’t notice the sting from the injection”. Beyond that Google’s actions are steadily eroding the net both directly and indirectly by inspiring legions of site-jackers and domain-squatters to set up automatic topic focused Google Ad Portals. These are now so dominant that depending on the topic, Google’s own first page search results are overwhelmed by these -non sites-. So you get ad’s on the result page, then you get taken to a site that is totally covered in Google’s Adfeed with Google search results made to look like content that then take you to other -non sites-.

I’ve often read about how the net is buckling under the strain of spam and email is nearly useless. There are annual studies on the subject and projections.

Ever read one on what strain the net is under due to the king of all spam, Google? No, don’t suppose that would come up on a Google search would it. It must be great to be the king.

Personally i’ll stick with companies that are making products and services because they want to make those things. Not because they are looking for another rattle to distract me while serving up ads.

Not sure where you “read” that, but I use Maps on the iPhone all the time (several times a day), I have yet to see any ads. Google’s Maps is an open API that anyone can access. It would be a trivial undertaking for Apple to write their own Maps application. If the application was indeed written by Google and not Apple, it would be called “Google Maps” and not just “Maps”, just like every other application written directly by Google. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if Google did send a few engineers to Apple to help on best-practice procedures for implementing their own client and optimizing data/requests from the servers. Apple does the same for major developers using their API’s; I’m sure there’s a few Apple engineers over at Adobe and Microsoft helping them move their code base to Cocoa. Given that, no one would ever say that Apple co-wrote Adobe PhotoShop or Microsoft Office.

arrington IS a joke: http://www.douchebagname.com

That’s seems a little over-sensitive to me. It’s a positive for everyone when people like Dan bring intelligent criticism to bear. If this is all it takes to bring down a brand then they didn’t stand much of a chance to begin with. This reminds me of some of the folks here that can’t handle any criticism Dan makes about Republicans. If your belief system is that fragile that says a lot more about it than Dan or anyone other critic could.

Google Maps mobile client page says it comes pre-installed on iPhone. Also, I read that Google Maps on the iPhone this month started displaying unobtrusive sponsored ads. So if Apple wrote the Maps client, would they display ads? Probably not. So Google and Apple probably worked together on the Maps client.

Anyway, I came across a news item that Apple bought a mapping company called PlaceBase in July 2009.

You say that you are offering “a reality check for people making wildly inaccurate claims and voicing unbridaled optimism”, but that is not where you stop. You call the people “Freetards” and “Cheapskates” as if the average consumer has any idea at all what the OS cost their phone manufacturer. I will also remind you how you belittled those that pushed against DRM back in the day -only to then take their side as soon as SJ wrote his “Thoughts on Music” letter.

I will admit to being a cheerleader for Google. As I am a cheerleader for Apple as well. As I am with BB, Palm, and Nokia. I really like the way technology is going. The competition has brought about more Consumer Electronics innovation in the last 3 years than we have seen in the previous decade. And it’s not slowing down for sure.

My issue with your recent writings is that you seem to have taken a Rush Limbaugh style “I want them to Fail” stance. It doesn’t suit you. The fact is, the more phones and the more phone OS’s there are on the market, the better. This is how capitalism works right. Capitalism doesn’t work when one company owns a lions share of the market and can dictate (by sheer momentum) at what rate technology increases.