Apple made a mess o’ announcements during the WWDC keynote Monday and one of the biggest shoes to fall was the ousting of Google as the source for the Maps app.
It’s very strange. The Macalope feels like he heard something about this before. Something about someone getting who wears the pants in this situation exactly backwards?
Any of this ring a bell?
No?
OK, guess we’re done for the day then. We’ll just knock off early and…
Ah, no, wait! here it is! How silly of the Macalope. Turns out it was in his clipboard the whole time!
Yes, it was just three months ago that Australian TV maker Ruslan Kogan was talking smack about the Apple-Google relationship.
“Without Google, Apple would be nothing. They may have great phones and tablets but the decent apps and the ones everyone uses on an iPhone and an iPad are made by Google, like Google Maps.
“Google won’t do this but they could piss off Apple by making their apps only available on Android tablets, they have the power.”
As the Macalope noted at the time:
Kogan has this exactly backwards: Google makes two-thirds of its mobile ad revenue from iOS devices and that amount is chump change compared to what Apple makes on the iPhone alone. Google, simply put, is not in Apple’s league. To be fair, though, no one is.
So, who dropped who again?
Google should, of course, be free to submit their own maps app to the App Store, but the point is not that many people are going to bother to use it unless it’s demonstrably better than Apple’s default app.
There are two ways of looking at this situation. Either this is why Google made Android or this is because Google made Android. One thing’s for sure, though: It’s not Google’s decision to not be the data provider for Maps on iOS. And the company’s hastily convened maps event last week didn’t exactly speak to its position of power.
That’s OK, Google fans. We know you’re still winning.
(Disclaimer: Actual winning not included, void where prohibited by law.)
[Editors’ Note: In addition to being a mythical beast, the Macalope is not an employee of Macworld. As a result, the Macalope is always free to criticize any media organization. Even ours.]