Google Mobile Blog

There's two kinds of apps going on here, and I think it's pretty anecdotal for why this probably wont be as transformative as fb's social graph (it's an apples vs. oranges comparison anyway). Google always builds the engineering app not the social app like they did with wave/buzz. This WILL be useful for people who are building the examples google talks about here http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/05/do-more-with-google-latitude-and-your.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+OfficialGoogleMobileBlog+%28Official+Google+Mobile+Blog%29 like turning off and on your lights when you get close to house etc.

but as usual, google only understands the engineer and focuses too much on utility and not enough on people.

There are somethings people do in fact WANT to check into (ignore the privacy issue entirely for now, just from a visceral product level), not just have automatically imported because the act of checking in is in and of itself an act of projecting identity. People who want to show what bar they are at because they are showing that they are cool want to press a button and get the reward right there of "I'm cool." Knowing that your phone is projecting that automatically wont give people the same rush as showing up at the bar and checking in.

If that's how it really worked, I'm starting to get the strong sense that no one on a Windows Phone ever actually used maps.google.com.

That looks completely unusable. Considering they launched the new version over a year and a half ago[1] and there was no widespread discussion (at least reaching outside of windows phone blogs) about the pain of the "interaction" those videos show, I'm not really feeling like a lot was lost here.

I would love to see a survey of Windows Phone users and how many have ever even attempted to use it. I know if I'm using a phone that can run a web browser at all, I would never even think to not use the native mapping app.

Google was wrong on the principle, but was anyone actually in the forest to be harmed? In any case, everyone should think hard before the next time you feel compelled to make a joke about testing and Opera's marketshare.

[1] http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2011/05/google-maps-on-your-mobile-browser.html

Google analytics: http://analyticsapp.com/

Street view: http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2008/11/google-maps-for-iphone-adds-street-view.html (since 2008)

Hulu: coming as a native app (http://gizmodo.com/5506892/hulu-app-coming-to-ipad)

Aviary: neat app; there are image editors on the iPhone, but I'm not familiar enough with Aviary to find something comparable. Maybe there isn't anything.

Games: There are tons of games on the iPhone and iPad that don't need Flash. Command and Conquer is one of them, and Final Fantasy I and II are some of my favourites. There are also tons of independent games, like Implode, Tiki Totems, and MotionX Poker, as well as pseudo-indie games like Plants vs. Zombies and Peggle.

So, are you really so averse to paying someone for their time? Nothing comes for nothing, and if you're so broke that you can't shell out a few bucks for an app that makes your life easier, you probably can't afford an iPhone either.

For the umpteenth time:

There was never a Google Maps app on the iPhone, there was an Apple app powered by Google's data.

The correct way of stating this is that Apple's iOS6 maps app is more data efficient than previous versions. As for the main reason the current app is more efficient is that it relies on vector graphics instead of image tiles, a technique Google have been using on Android for nearly 2 years:
http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/12/under-hood-of-google-maps-50-for.html

Another Android maps feature lets users select areas to cache offline, which I imagine saves even more data (it auto-caches frequented areas): http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2012/06/go-offline-with-google-maps-for-android.html

That feature is also worth mentioning for when Apple duplicates it and some people try to convince themselves that it was Apple's idea.

Apple did eventually reverse themselves on this, but here's the original blog post from Google about it (they originally supported iOS through Mobile Safari because of Apple's rejection).

http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2009/07/google-latitude-now-for-iphone.html

> We worked closely with Apple to bring Latitude to the iPhone in a way Apple thought would be best for iPhone users. After we developed a Latitude application for the iPhone, Apple requested we release Latitude as a web application in order to avoid confusion with Maps on the iPhone, which uses Google to serve maps tiles.

It took almost two years for Apple to cave.

The title is a little misleading. It may be more efficient compared to the 5 years old Google Maps app on iOS, but Google Maps for Android has been vector based since December 16th, 2010, when they launched Google Maps 5.0.

http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/12/under-hood-of-google-maps-50-for.html

Also don't forget Apple's Maps retrieve a lot less data than Google Maps, since they don't actually have that data. Google Maps offers a lot more information.