6 ms·

The actual title of this article is "Another Way Apple's Fight With Google Is Hurting Users", which casts less blame than the modified title here on HN, "Anothe

by adriand 14y ago

The actual title of this article is "Another Way Apple's Fight With Google Is Hurting Users", which casts less blame than the modified title here on HN, "Another Way Apple's Fight Against Google Is Hurting Users". It is unfair to present this ongoing situation as a war on Google by Apple. It is a competition between the two companies. Not to beat a long dead horse, but the war between the two companies started when Google entered the mobile device space.

lmm 14y ago
Until we see google blocking apple's apps from the android market, I don't think there's any moral equivalence here.
- flyinRyan 14y ago
  Lazy statement. You know Apple doesn't make apps for the android market.
  - lmm 14y ago
    I genuinely didn't, and am quite surprised. What about itunes? Do they just not bother selling to android users?
capo 14y ago
It hurts Apple's customers because they are blocking a superior free product for no apparent reason but to kill competition. As for: Not to beat a long dead horse, but the war between the two companies started when Google entered the mobile device space. Was entering the mobile market a bad thing? was it not allowed? is it for Apple alone and no one else's? that statement doesn't make any sense. I'm sure there was a time when Apple entered the mobile business and Nokia wasn't none too pleased.
- siglesias 14y ago
  It hurts Apple's customers because they are blocking a superior free product for no apparent reason but to kill competition. Seems like a hell of a good reason to me. Was entering the mobile market a bad thing? was it not allowed? is it for Apple alone and no one else's? Google and Apple had a symbiotic partnership, like WinTel, which dominated for the better part of two decades. Microsoft stayed out of chips, Intel stayed out of doing an OS. If one decided to take 100% and get into the market of the other, it would create a nasty situation where both were forced out of their comfort zones to make crappy stuff. It would break trust. And yet that's exactly what Google did with Android: it had a partner that didn't have search or web in its DNA—and thus an ideal partner—and decided it could take the partner's market. Pardon the teen parlance here, but that's a little backstabby. Apple's indignation, in my view, is entirely justified.
  - Wintamute 14y ago
    I think everybody would agree that all is fair in love and war. Any company is free to go after any market, any adversely impacted existing relationships are tactical losses. What's important is how all parties move forwards after the event. You say that Apple is justified to feel indignant. Well maybe so, but the key question here is is Apple's reaction in their own long term interests? Poisoning their brand by releasing crappy software, moving into spaces were they are non-expert, and degrading the experiences of paying customers is at the very least a questionable reaction. Indignation, feeling like you've been backstabbed, retaliation etc. are all words that should not enter the vocabulary of a corporate entity where you want only a highly rational and logical assessment of a situation. I'd argue that Apple's brand would be much stronger (and their products much better) right now if they'd stuck to their core values and brought Google in to power the parts of iOS that they do best (i.e. maps and voice etc.).
    - siglesias 14y ago
      Heads I win, tails you lose. Apple either sends users and data to the belly of the beast that decided to complete head-on with them (making Android better, by the way) or figures out how to do this stuff themselves and offers beta products. I would say that Apple doing the latter given Google's aggression makes a lot more sense than Google's aggression in the first place.
- betterth 14y ago
  >It hurts Apple's customers because they are blocking a superior free product for no apparent reason but to kill competition. Misinformation. Apple isn't BLOCKING anything! Apple released, in iOS1, Apple Maps powered by Google Maps API Data. Google, wanting to monetize Google Maps API access, began charging expensive rates for their heavy users, of which Apple was the heaviest user of all. In response to Google asking Apple for millions of dollars for a service they provide for free on every other platform, Apple decide to change the data source in Apple Maps. Google has yet to provide their own app on iOS for mapping, as they're likely pissed that their million-dollar-lunch just ended and now they have to provide a service for FREE. I'm so tired of this blatantly anti-Apple bias.
  - karatehammer 14y ago
    You don't get to act like a child if someone makes you angry. That's not how the world (should) work. That is the issue here.
  - capo 14y ago
    You think Apple was paying for the Maps API through the Google API console?! Large companies do business through special contracts that have their own terms, and the maps contract reportedly is still valid for another year or so.
  - eco 14y ago
    You do not know how much (if anything) Google was charging Apple for API access or if it increased when they generally increased the pricing. They almost certainly got a better deal than general users of the API because they are Apple and have a massive user base. We do know that Apple and Google had a contract in place but beyond that we don't know anything. Furthermore, Apple does not get their data from "Apple Maps". They pay to license it from TomTom and other companies (though they do, of course, also produce data of their own that gets combined with the third-party sources to produce the aggregation that is Apple Maps). I don't know how much you meant by "millions of dollars" but it was probably substantially less than the $267 million Apple paid to acquire C3 Technologies to add 3D maps to their offering. Apple's decision was a great long term decision for them but it did hurt users in the short term (hence Cook's apology).
- zerohm 14y ago
  Pretend you are Ford Motor Company. You've had a great, mutually beneficial relationship with Firestone Tires for many years. But Firestone Tires decides to get into the car making business. Now they design cars in direct competition with yours, they give away designs for free, and occasionally they even have their designs manufactured and sell the cars for profit. Now would you expect Ford to continue to buy tires from Firestone?
  - eco 14y ago
    I don't see why not if Firestone is still making the best tires for the price and the tires you have in development inexplicably blowout occasionally. Switching to your own tires (if you can make them competitive and meet your needs) is a good decision but one that shouldn't be done before they are ready. Samsung is Apple's biggest competitor in the phone space but Apple still buys a large number of the parts used in their phones from them. Apple has been steadily replacing things like processors with their own designs but this certainly isn't because of some petty offense they've taken to Samsung entering their market. It's because it's in their best interest to design their own parts (especially long term). Apple does come off as being emotional about Android with the decisions they've made (especially Maps) but implementing their own Maps and other features of their phones themselves is a good long term business plan. In the case of Maps, they launched too soon but working on their own mapping solution was a good decision.
    - brandon 14y ago
      Fun fact: the A6, while designed by Apple, is fabbed by Samsung.
    - zerohm 14y ago
      Except that Firestone isn't selling you as good a tire as they are putting on their own Firestone cars. In order to get those tires, they want your customer's usage data and to sell advertisement space on the tires... Both parties are acting in what they believe to be their best interests. I don't fault either. (and btw I completely agree with your second paragraph)
efuquen 14y ago
So, Apple's anti-competitive actions are justified as a counter measure to Google entering it's mobile device space? Since when did Apple own the mobile device "turf", isn't this a suppose to be a free market society? No market is sacred, companies should be making better products to compete and hold on to it's market share, not killing them and stifling innovation to keep a monopoly it no longer has.
- fatbird 14y ago
  Since when have anti-competitive actions been bad things in the absence of a monopoly, which Apple most assuredly does not have in the mobile space? We're all for competition and its benefits, except when we're not?
  - michaelt 14y ago
    For me as a user, having an app that works replaced with an app that doesn't work is a bad thing.
stanleydrew 14y ago
I agree the title should be changed to match the original. But it was probably just an honest mistake. Also I think you are being a little disingenuous. When you have the CEO of one company saying it will wage thermonuclear war on a product, that is clearly a statement of intent to destroy said product that goes beyond competition in the marketplace. > ...the war between the two companies started when Google entered the mobile device space. Entering a market isn't usually equated with starting a war.
- stcredzero 14y ago
  > When you have the CEO of one company saying it will wage thermonuclear war on a product, that is clearly a statement of intent to destroy said product that goes beyond competition in the marketplace. It's been said that the Hohenzollern family had a specific policy: Never start a war unless victory is assured. War is a "two edged sword." It has the potential to do both sides serious harm. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Hohenzollern http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Hohenzollern Apple needs to do some soul searching. They need to be looking out for their customer's best interests. Somehow they've lost the way, and empirically, this is no longer the case. Maps is just the biggest symptom. The article points out another.
asr 14y ago
Both examples from the article (maps, Google's iOS app) are examples where the author claims/implies Apple is at fault. So I don't think the title slip is particularly misleading. Also, who cares who started it? Usually, competition is good for consumers--in this case, if Apple approved this app, competition would mean we have two natural language search apps on iOS. The problem is that Apple is "competing" by hurting their users, not by improving their products. And Google does this too (see: lack of turn-by-turn navigation on iOS), but my sense is they do it less. As the article does, it's more helpful to focus on how the competition takes place than on casting blame for starting the "competition," which is fundamentally a good thing.
brudgers 14y ago
The precipitating event was Apple's blocking of a Google Voice app from iTunes. I suspect that this had something to do with the disruption of Apple's relative positioning of the iPod Touch and iPhone within it's product line. The ability to text and talk across the garden wall with an iPod would have likely had a negative impact on iPhone sales.
- stanleydrew 14y ago
  The Google Voice app does not allow you to make phone calls from an iPod. It's not a VoIP client.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
warfangle 14y ago
If you flip the players around, could you see Google allowing Siri on the Google Play market? I could. (Siri would even be able to launch apps, etc, due to Android's more robust API)
- randomdata 14y ago
  Siri can launch apps, though sadly the interaction with those apps pretty much stops there.
RyanMcGreal 14y ago
A few points in the interest of fairness: * Apple began developing the iPhone in 2004 and released it in June 2007. * Android was founded in 2003 and Google bought the company in 2005. Google and partners announced the Open Handset Alliance in November 2007 and the first Android phone was released in October 2008. So far, so good. Two companies that did not start out in mobile telephony/computing both began developing products and entering the space around the same time, competing with the existing smartphone manufacturers, particularly RIM and Nokia. Google's competitive practices have consisted mainly in developing and iterating a solid product, partnering with a variety of hardware providers to develop a large ecosystem and market share, and occasionally releasing flagship devices to raise the state of the art. Google has borrowed some innovations from its competitors and developed some innovations of its own. Apple's competitive practices have consisted mainly in developing and iterating a solid product, partnering with developers via an app store to develop a large ecosystem, and maintaining control of the design and manufacture of devices to maintain standards of quality. Apple has borrowed some innovations from its competitors and developed some innovations of its own. Apple has also pledged "thermonuclear war" to "destroy Android", launched a patent war of attrition against Android hardware vendors, and is now, apparently, hobbling the functionality of its own device in an attempt to marginalize Google. There's competition, and then there's anti-competitive behaviour. Apple would do better to stick with the former, since the company is obviously very good at designing, building and marketing highly competitive products.
- freyr 14y ago
  > Apple has also pledged "thermonuclear war" to "destroy Android" In fairness, this was a comment made by Steve Jobs. Apple never made such a pledge and Steve Jobs is no longer at Apple.
  - RyanMcGreal 14y ago
    That's correct but not particularly important to the discussion. Jobs set the direction for the company, a direction the company continues to take after his untimely passing.

by adriand 14y ago

lmm 14y ago

Until we see google blocking apple's apps from the android market, I don't think there's any moral equivalence here.

flyinRyan 14y ago
Lazy statement. You know Apple doesn't make apps for the android market.
- lmm 14y ago
  I genuinely didn't, and am quite surprised. What about itunes? Do they just not bother selling to android users?

capo 14y ago

It hurts Apple's customers because they are blocking a superior free product for no apparent reason but to kill competition. As for: Not to beat a long dead horse, but the war between the two companies started when Google entered the mobile device space. Was entering the mobile market a bad thing? was it not allowed? is it for Apple alone and no one else's? that statement doesn't make any sense. I'm sure there was a time when Apple entered the mobile business and Nokia wasn't none too pleased.

siglesias 14y ago
It hurts Apple's customers because they are blocking a superior free product for no apparent reason but to kill competition. Seems like a hell of a good reason to me. Was entering the mobile market a bad thing? was it not allowed? is it for Apple alone and no one else's? Google and Apple had a symbiotic partnership, like WinTel, which dominated for the better part of two decades. Microsoft stayed out of chips, Intel stayed out of doing an OS. If one decided to take 100% and get into the market of the other, it would create a nasty situation where both were forced out of their comfort zones to make crappy stuff. It would break trust. And yet that's exactly what Google did with Android: it had a partner that didn't have search or web in its DNA—and thus an ideal partner—and decided it could take the partner's market. Pardon the teen parlance here, but that's a little backstabby. Apple's indignation, in my view, is entirely justified.
- Wintamute 14y ago
  I think everybody would agree that all is fair in love and war. Any company is free to go after any market, any adversely impacted existing relationships are tactical losses. What's important is how all parties move forwards after the event. You say that Apple is justified to feel indignant. Well maybe so, but the key question here is is Apple's reaction in their own long term interests? Poisoning their brand by releasing crappy software, moving into spaces were they are non-expert, and degrading the experiences of paying customers is at the very least a questionable reaction. Indignation, feeling like you've been backstabbed, retaliation etc. are all words that should not enter the vocabulary of a corporate entity where you want only a highly rational and logical assessment of a situation. I'd argue that Apple's brand would be much stronger (and their products much better) right now if they'd stuck to their core values and brought Google in to power the parts of iOS that they do best (i.e. maps and voice etc.).
  - siglesias 14y ago
    Heads I win, tails you lose. Apple either sends users and data to the belly of the beast that decided to complete head-on with them (making Android better, by the way) or figures out how to do this stuff themselves and offers beta products. I would say that Apple doing the latter given Google's aggression makes a lot more sense than Google's aggression in the first place.
betterth 14y ago
>It hurts Apple's customers because they are blocking a superior free product for no apparent reason but to kill competition. Misinformation. Apple isn't BLOCKING anything! Apple released, in iOS1, Apple Maps powered by Google Maps API Data. Google, wanting to monetize Google Maps API access, began charging expensive rates for their heavy users, of which Apple was the heaviest user of all. In response to Google asking Apple for millions of dollars for a service they provide for free on every other platform, Apple decide to change the data source in Apple Maps. Google has yet to provide their own app on iOS for mapping, as they're likely pissed that their million-dollar-lunch just ended and now they have to provide a service for FREE. I'm so tired of this blatantly anti-Apple bias.
- karatehammer 14y ago
  You don't get to act like a child if someone makes you angry. That's not how the world (should) work. That is the issue here.
- capo 14y ago
  You think Apple was paying for the Maps API through the Google API console?! Large companies do business through special contracts that have their own terms, and the maps contract reportedly is still valid for another year or so.
- eco 14y ago
  You do not know how much (if anything) Google was charging Apple for API access or if it increased when they generally increased the pricing. They almost certainly got a better deal than general users of the API because they are Apple and have a massive user base. We do know that Apple and Google had a contract in place but beyond that we don't know anything. Furthermore, Apple does not get their data from "Apple Maps". They pay to license it from TomTom and other companies (though they do, of course, also produce data of their own that gets combined with the third-party sources to produce the aggregation that is Apple Maps). I don't know how much you meant by "millions of dollars" but it was probably substantially less than the $267 million Apple paid to acquire C3 Technologies to add 3D maps to their offering. Apple's decision was a great long term decision for them but it did hurt users in the short term (hence Cook's apology).
zerohm 14y ago
Pretend you are Ford Motor Company. You've had a great, mutually beneficial relationship with Firestone Tires for many years. But Firestone Tires decides to get into the car making business. Now they design cars in direct competition with yours, they give away designs for free, and occasionally they even have their designs manufactured and sell the cars for profit. Now would you expect Ford to continue to buy tires from Firestone?
- eco 14y ago
  I don't see why not if Firestone is still making the best tires for the price and the tires you have in development inexplicably blowout occasionally. Switching to your own tires (if you can make them competitive and meet your needs) is a good decision but one that shouldn't be done before they are ready. Samsung is Apple's biggest competitor in the phone space but Apple still buys a large number of the parts used in their phones from them. Apple has been steadily replacing things like processors with their own designs but this certainly isn't because of some petty offense they've taken to Samsung entering their market. It's because it's in their best interest to design their own parts (especially long term). Apple does come off as being emotional about Android with the decisions they've made (especially Maps) but implementing their own Maps and other features of their phones themselves is a good long term business plan. In the case of Maps, they launched too soon but working on their own mapping solution was a good decision.
  - brandon 14y ago
    Fun fact: the A6, while designed by Apple, is fabbed by Samsung.
  - zerohm 14y ago
    Except that Firestone isn't selling you as good a tire as they are putting on their own Firestone cars. In order to get those tires, they want your customer's usage data and to sell advertisement space on the tires... Both parties are acting in what they believe to be their best interests. I don't fault either. (and btw I completely agree with your second paragraph)

efuquen 14y ago

So, Apple's anti-competitive actions are justified as a counter measure to Google entering it's mobile device space? Since when did Apple own the mobile device "turf", isn't this a suppose to be a free market society? No market is sacred, companies should be making better products to compete and hold on to it's market share, not killing them and stifling innovation to keep a monopoly it no longer has.

fatbird 14y ago
Since when have anti-competitive actions been bad things in the absence of a monopoly, which Apple most assuredly does not have in the mobile space? We're all for competition and its benefits, except when we're not?
- michaelt 14y ago
  For me as a user, having an app that works replaced with an app that doesn't work is a bad thing.

stanleydrew 14y ago

I agree the title should be changed to match the original. But it was probably just an honest mistake. Also I think you are being a little disingenuous. When you have the CEO of one company saying it will wage thermonuclear war on a product, that is clearly a statement of intent to destroy said product that goes beyond competition in the marketplace. > ...the war between the two companies started when Google entered the mobile device space. Entering a market isn't usually equated with starting a war.

stcredzero 14y ago
> When you have the CEO of one company saying it will wage thermonuclear war on a product, that is clearly a statement of intent to destroy said product that goes beyond competition in the marketplace. It's been said that the Hohenzollern family had a specific policy: Never start a war unless victory is assured. War is a "two edged sword." It has the potential to do both sides serious harm. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Hohenzollern http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Hohenzollern Apple needs to do some soul searching. They need to be looking out for their customer's best interests. Somehow they've lost the way, and empirically, this is no longer the case. Maps is just the biggest symptom. The article points out another.

asr 14y ago

Both examples from the article (maps, Google's iOS app) are examples where the author claims/implies Apple is at fault. So I don't think the title slip is particularly misleading. Also, who cares who started it? Usually, competition is good for consumers--in this case, if Apple approved this app, competition would mean we have two natural language search apps on iOS. The problem is that Apple is "competing" by hurting their users, not by improving their products. And Google does this too (see: lack of turn-by-turn navigation on iOS), but my sense is they do it less. As the article does, it's more helpful to focus on how the competition takes place than on casting blame for starting the "competition," which is fundamentally a good thing.

brudgers 14y ago

The precipitating event was Apple's blocking of a Google Voice app from iTunes. I suspect that this had something to do with the disruption of Apple's relative positioning of the iPod Touch and iPhone within it's product line. The ability to text and talk across the garden wall with an iPod would have likely had a negative impact on iPhone sales.

stanleydrew 14y ago
The Google Voice app does not allow you to make phone calls from an iPod. It's not a VoIP client.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]

warfangle 14y ago

If you flip the players around, could you see Google allowing Siri on the Google Play market? I could. (Siri would even be able to launch apps, etc, due to Android's more robust API)

randomdata 14y ago
Siri can launch apps, though sadly the interaction with those apps pretty much stops there.

RyanMcGreal 14y ago

A few points in the interest of fairness: * Apple began developing the iPhone in 2004 and released it in June 2007. * Android was founded in 2003 and Google bought the company in 2005. Google and partners announced the Open Handset Alliance in November 2007 and the first Android phone was released in October 2008. So far, so good. Two companies that did not start out in mobile telephony/computing both began developing products and entering the space around the same time, competing with the existing smartphone manufacturers, particularly RIM and Nokia. Google's competitive practices have consisted mainly in developing and iterating a solid product, partnering with a variety of hardware providers to develop a large ecosystem and market share, and occasionally releasing flagship devices to raise the state of the art. Google has borrowed some innovations from its competitors and developed some innovations of its own. Apple's competitive practices have consisted mainly in developing and iterating a solid product, partnering with developers via an app store to develop a large ecosystem, and maintaining control of the design and manufacture of devices to maintain standards of quality. Apple has borrowed some innovations from its competitors and developed some innovations of its own. Apple has also pledged "thermonuclear war" to "destroy Android", launched a patent war of attrition against Android hardware vendors, and is now, apparently, hobbling the functionality of its own device in an attempt to marginalize Google. There's competition, and then there's anti-competitive behaviour. Apple would do better to stick with the former, since the company is obviously very good at designing, building and marketing highly competitive products.

freyr 14y ago
> Apple has also pledged "thermonuclear war" to "destroy Android" In fairness, this was a comment made by Steve Jobs. Apple never made such a pledge and Steve Jobs is no longer at Apple.
- RyanMcGreal 14y ago
  That's correct but not particularly important to the discussion. Jobs set the direction for the company, a direction the company continues to take after his untimely passing.