I think it would be a much worse sign if a separate group within Google launched a product (which required signing up partners) and the initial product wasn't t

I think it would be a much worse sign if a separate group within Google launched a product (which required signing up partners) and the initial product wasn't targeted for the dominant tablet platform. I am surprised that they didn't try to make this "web-based", but if you're going to launch a product like this as a native application, it would be downright foolish not to do so first on the iPad.