Probably because Google got a lot of negative PR for forcing manufactures away from more accurate Location API implementations so now they need to use a private

Probably because Google got a lot of negative PR for forcing manufactures away from more accurate Location API implementations so now they need to use a private API as an excuse to kill location service competition in the future. You can see the internal Google emails here where they note SkyHook was more accurate than their implementation http://www.businessinsider.com/google-skyhook-emails-2011-5?op=1 http://www.businessinsider.com/google-skyhook-emails-2011-5?... And they force Motorola to stop shipping devices unless Motorola agrees to not use SkyHook.