SAN FRANCISCO — Once the best of friends, Google and Apple
have become foes, battling in courtrooms and in the consumer
marketplace. Last week, the hostilities took a new turn when they
spilled right onto smartphone screens.
In the latest version of Apple’s iPhone software, which became available Wednesday, Apple removed two mainstay apps, both Google products — Maps and YouTube.
The disappearing apps show just how far-reaching the companies’ rivalry
has become, as well as the importance of mobile users to their
businesses.
“It’s the two big kids kicking sand in the sandbox,” said Colin Gillis,
an analyst who covers Google and Apple for BGC Partners. “They’re now
competing against each other with phones, with maps, with content, with
search. They’re going head-to-head.”
Maps are particularly crucial on mobile devices, where location-based
services and ads have emerged as the pathway to making money. Google and
Apple are not the only warriors in the fight. Amazon, Nokia, Microsoft,
AOL and Yahoo are competing, too.
“If you own a mobile ecology, as Google does, the other mobile ecology
owners are not going to allow you to own tons of data in their world,”
said Scott Rafer, chief executive of Lumatic,
which makes city map apps. “And so neither Apple nor Amazon were going
to let Google know where every one of their users was at every time.”
Being kicked off the iPhone has potentially significant consequences for
Google, whose Maps service earns more than half its traffic from mobile
devices, and almost half of that mobile traffic has been from iPhone
users. Apple’s move strikes at the heart of Google’s core business,
search, because about 40 percent of mobile searches are for local places
or things.
“Local is a huge thing for Google in terms of advertising dollars, and
search is very tied to that,” said Barry Schwartz, an editor at Search Engine Land,
an industry blog. “Knowing where you are, when you search for coffee,
it can bring up local coffee shops and ads that are much more relevant
for the user.”
Consumers are innocent bystanders of the brawl. IPhone users now have an
extra step to download the YouTube app from the App Store and, so far,
Google has given no indication that it will offer a maps app. Apple’s
maps, meanwhile, are littered with flaws, some laughable, like a bridge that appears to collapse crossing the Tacoma Narrows Strait of Puget Sound.
Some analysts say, however, that Apple’s maps will quickly improve, and
that the long-term result of heightened competition will be better maps
all around.
“Apple Maps are apparently not ready for prime time, and that’s a loss,”
said Peter Krasilovsky, the program director for marketplaces at
BIA/Kelsey, a local media research firm. “But a long-term loss? No. With
all the incredible technology being developed by everybody, consumers
are the winner.”
The war between Google and Apple
escalated abruptly before breaking out on the iPhone screen. At the
height of their friendship, their chief executives together unveiled the
first iPhone, packed with Google services like maps, search and
YouTube. But since Google introduced its own mobile operating system, Android, the companies have battled over everything mobile, from patents to ads and apps.
The brawl has played out most publicly in the courtroom, where Apple and
phone manufacturers that use Google’s Android software have sued one
another. Most recently, on Friday and Saturday, Apple and Samsung each
filed papers to amend or overturn a jury verdict that awarded Apple $1
billion in a patent trial with Samsung. Apple wants more money and
Samsung wants a new trial. The companies will return to court Dec. 6 to
discuss their demands.
Though Apple’s rejection of YouTube is part of its effort to cut ties
with its former friend, it is different from the battle over maps
because Apple has no competing video service. Google has introduced a
new YouTube app in the App Store, which has become the No. 1 free app.
But with maps, Google, which has long been the dominant digital
mapmaker, now must adjust to a new rival, along with the loss of
valuable iPhone users.
Even though Android phones far outnumber iPhones — 60 percent of
smartphones run Android, versus 34 percent for iPhones, according to
Canalys, a research firm — iPhone users account for almost half of
mobile traffic to Google Maps.
In July, according to comScore Mobile Metrix, 12.6 million iPhone users
visited Maps each day, versus 7.6 million on Android phones. And iPhone
users spent an hour and a half using Maps during the month, while
Android users spent just an hour.
Those users are a valuable source for Google, because it relies on their
data to determine things like which businesses or landmarks are most
important and whether maps have errors.
Google also risks losing the allegiance of app developers who build apps that tie in to maps.
“Overnight, Apple has really taken out a significant chunk of Google’s
market, and it’s much harder for Google to say to developers, ‘We’re the
only game in town, come play with us,’ ” said Tony Costa, a senior
analyst who studies mobile phones at Forrester. “It will affect the
Google ecosystem, putting it back in the same game of their apps lagging
behind Apple, and that’s not a good position for them to be in.”
Still, Google is no doubt feeling a bit of satisfaction as Apple is loudly criticized for the errors in its maps.
Apple Maps users have been tallying its blunders. A Tumblr devoted to the topic
included a missing lake in Hyderabad, India, misplaced restaurants in
Cambridge, Mass., and the placement of Berlin in Antarctica.
Apple responded Thursday with a statement that its map service was a
work in progress and would improve as more people used it.
Google, meanwhile, has been reminding people of its seven years of experience in mapping.
But the company would not say whether it was building an iPhone app for
users to download. Its only public statement on the matter has been
vague: “Our goal is to make Google Maps available to everyone who wants
to use it, regardless of device, browser, or operating system.”
Google could decide not to build an app, as a gamble that iPhone users
depend on its maps so much that they might switch to Android.
If it does build an app, Apple would have to approve it. Its guidelines
for developers are ambiguous, but exclude apps that “appear confusingly
similar to an existing Apple product.”
Rejecting Google’s app would most likely set off a brouhaha similar to
that over the Google Voice app, which Apple rejected in 2009, prompting
an investigation by the Federal Communications Commission, and a year
later was approved.
More likely, analysts say, Google is waiting for the right time to swoop
in and save the day by offering its own iPhone app. One benefit of
making its own app: It could add features and sell ads, which it could
not do on the old app because Apple controlled it. The situation with
the YouTube app was the same.
In the meantime, Google is encouraging people to use maps on the
iPhone’s browser, where it shows instructions to install it on their
home screen.
Brian X. Chen contributed reporting from New York.
