4 ms·

Could there have been a (pro android) business case for not releasing this app? Edit: accidentally wrote 'pr android.'

by netcan 14y ago

buro9 14y ago
There's a PR business case in making money by acting in your customer's interests regardless of whether they choose to use your services exclusively or not. The polarisation that has arisen between supporters of each company isn't something worth feeding.
speg 14y ago
I don't think Google cares what platform you're accessing their services from. As long as they get your data, they're happy.
- ajanuary 14y ago
  And how they push logging in/signing up for an account only increases that.
- netcan 14y ago
  I'm sure the android part cares about how many people buy android and how cool it is compared to iOS. Apple use their apps as a competitive advantage and Google aren't. Itunes supported Apple podcast & music players would help android. Obviously Google maps helps iOS. I guess what I'm asking is "Is this helping maps at the expense of Android?"
  - czr80 14y ago
    The answer is clearly yes - this largely removes one reason why someone might prefer Android over iOS. Hard to say how big the effect is, though.
    - netcan 14y ago
      Especially since Apple are clearly working to improve their own maps. If/when they hit (or near) parity, they'll have the massive advantage of being bundled. At least before, they were maintaining a long term position as the major maps app. If they lose 90% of these users when in a year or two when Apple improve their maps, it would just have been a wasted opportunity to sell androids, especially the high end ones.
      - snogglethorpe 14y ago
        > Especially since Apple are clearly working to improve their own maps. If/when they hit (or near) parity ... The thing is that Google is also working constantly to improve its maps, and has a far larger and more experienced team doing so than Apple. [Besides the underlying infrastructure which forms the bulk the effort, now that Google has its own app, they have a very definite incentive to keep improving it (whereas in the case of the iOS5 maps app, there were artificial constraints preventing it from being kept up-to-date).] There's no guarantee that Apple ever will hit parity; indeed, they may simply fall farther behind...
  - dannyr 14y ago
    You realize that 2-3 years ago, the IPhone was 10+ times better than Android yet people still bought Android phones?
jrochkind1 14y ago
I think the bigger business case for not releasing it would have been unrelated to Android: Apple used to pay us a hell of a lot of money for our map data, and they chose to stop. So now we give their users our stuff for free instead? but clearly they decided in the end there was a bigger business case for doing it. I don't entirely understand how Google plans to make money, and I'm not always sure they understand themselves -- but they're probably right that if they keep being the best at what they do and getting as many people as possible (on any platform) to use it, then they can keep harvesting data from all those users, and find ways to monetize that data (rather than charging for apps).
- VikingCoder 14y ago
  "Navigate to Chinese food" I can imagine ways to make money from that. If 5 Chinese restaurants are all just about the same distance, and have relatively the same ratings, then you can suggest the person goes to the one that happens to have paid Google $0.50 in advertising. Maybe they won't do this, maybe they will. But picture that you're a Chinese restaurant, and you know people use Google Maps to navigate to you - you'd want Google's data on your store to be up-to-date. Having up-to-date data from local businesses has to be very good for Google.
- dannyr 14y ago
  It is the dependence on the Google ecosystem. Knowing what places you go to will help Google improve its search results and serve you better ads on all Google sites.
mynegation 14y ago
Now there is none. Android has already won, if not by profit margins then by market share for sure. Let alone the fact that (as others pointed out) Google gets your attention and your searches, so they do not care. Google created Android precisely for the reason not to give any vendor (Apple predominantly) power to lock them out of mobile search markets.

Could there have been a (pro android) business case for not releasing this app? Edit: accidentally wrote 'pr android.'

by netcan 14y ago

Could there have been a (pro android) business case for not releasing this app? Edit: accidentally wrote 'pr android.'

buro9 14y ago

There's a PR business case in making money by acting in your customer's interests regardless of whether they choose to use your services exclusively or not. The polarisation that has arisen between supporters of each company isn't something worth feeding.

speg 14y ago

I don't think Google cares what platform you're accessing their services from. As long as they get your data, they're happy.

ajanuary 14y ago
And how they push logging in/signing up for an account only increases that.
netcan 14y ago
I'm sure the android part cares about how many people buy android and how cool it is compared to iOS. Apple use their apps as a competitive advantage and Google aren't. Itunes supported Apple podcast & music players would help android. Obviously Google maps helps iOS. I guess what I'm asking is "Is this helping maps at the expense of Android?"
- czr80 14y ago
  The answer is clearly yes - this largely removes one reason why someone might prefer Android over iOS. Hard to say how big the effect is, though.
  - netcan 14y ago
    Especially since Apple are clearly working to improve their own maps. If/when they hit (or near) parity, they'll have the massive advantage of being bundled. At least before, they were maintaining a long term position as the major maps app. If they lose 90% of these users when in a year or two when Apple improve their maps, it would just have been a wasted opportunity to sell androids, especially the high end ones.
    - snogglethorpe 14y ago
      > Especially since Apple are clearly working to improve their own maps. If/when they hit (or near) parity ... The thing is that Google is also working constantly to improve its maps, and has a far larger and more experienced team doing so than Apple. [Besides the underlying infrastructure which forms the bulk the effort, now that Google has its own app, they have a very definite incentive to keep improving it (whereas in the case of the iOS5 maps app, there were artificial constraints preventing it from being kept up-to-date).] There's no guarantee that Apple ever will hit parity; indeed, they may simply fall farther behind...
- dannyr 14y ago
  You realize that 2-3 years ago, the IPhone was 10+ times better than Android yet people still bought Android phones?

jrochkind1 14y ago

I think the bigger business case for not releasing it would have been unrelated to Android: Apple used to pay us a hell of a lot of money for our map data, and they chose to stop. So now we give their users our stuff for free instead? but clearly they decided in the end there was a bigger business case for doing it. I don't entirely understand how Google plans to make money, and I'm not always sure they understand themselves -- but they're probably right that if they keep being the best at what they do and getting as many people as possible (on any platform) to use it, then they can keep harvesting data from all those users, and find ways to monetize that data (rather than charging for apps).

VikingCoder 14y ago
"Navigate to Chinese food" I can imagine ways to make money from that. If 5 Chinese restaurants are all just about the same distance, and have relatively the same ratings, then you can suggest the person goes to the one that happens to have paid Google $0.50 in advertising. Maybe they won't do this, maybe they will. But picture that you're a Chinese restaurant, and you know people use Google Maps to navigate to you - you'd want Google's data on your store to be up-to-date. Having up-to-date data from local businesses has to be very good for Google.
dannyr 14y ago
It is the dependence on the Google ecosystem. Knowing what places you go to will help Google improve its search results and serve you better ads on all Google sites.

mynegation 14y ago

Now there is none. Android has already won, if not by profit margins then by market share for sure. Let alone the fact that (as others pointed out) Google gets your attention and your searches, so they do not care. Google created Android precisely for the reason not to give any vendor (Apple predominantly) power to lock them out of mobile search markets.