Apple’s Feud With Google Is Now Felt on iPhone
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.
