Apple’s Feud With Google Is Now Felt on iPhone

 

 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.

The disappearing apps show just how far-reaching the companies’ rivalry has become, as well as the importance of mobile users to their businesses.

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.

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.

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.

    Source:The New York Times