That's also not what happened. I was on the Google Maps team at the time and the issues were far deeper and more problematic than "not getting telemetry" which was at any rate, not an issue - what sort of "telemetry" do you think a Maps app could report that isn't search queries or tile requests? Maps apps are just rendering frontends for giant server farms after all. Claiming it's about telemetry is just Apple propaganda.
The real problem was that Apple wrote the Google Maps app, and wasn't willing to cooperate with Google on it at all. Literally, they demanded some basic protocol specs and then wrote the app themselves. This led to several problems:
1. They refused to tell Google what changes they were making to their app, which led to:
2. Repeatedly screwing up their implementation in ways that very seriously threatened the stability of the entire Google Maps services (think: slamming the servers with way more traffic than any reasonable implementation should).
Apple love to claim the best results arise from integrating hardware, software and services. Well, guess what, that logic works in both directions: by preventing even basic cooperation between the Apple team writing the GMaps app, and the rest of the GMaps team, they created massive problems. Especially because at this time Apple engineering had no serious experience with large online services ... MobileMe was a disaster ... and so they kept making basic mistakes no Google team would ever make. They also refused Google's help to stop making them.
3. The GMaps team was much larger and better funded than the iOS team, so iOS rapidly fell behind the featureset available on Android and the web. Google attempted to fix this by writing their own GMaps app, which Apple then blocked on the grounds it was competitive with their own (this was back when they had this policy).
Basically the relationship was antagonistic from the start from Apple's side, and rapidly spiralled downhill as Google's own services accelerated away from what Apple was capable of.
The whole Apple schtick that Google was desperate to violate privacy or get telemetry is just an advertising attack angle: it shouldn't work on the sort of people who read Hacker News. Apple Maps is architecturally identical to Google Maps, after all.
I happen to know the other side of this. I get the impression from your post that we were probably looking at the same thing, just from very different angles. I think there were aspects to it that you either weren’t privy to or just couldn’t see from where you sat.
I don’t think anyone involved in this from Apple still works there anymore, and it’s been 10-11 years now so probably not even Apple itself really knows all the details at this point. From what I’ve heard the same may be true at Google; these stories are basically folklore to the current crop of the Maps team there.
In any case, as I recall it, advertising data and location tracking absolutely were sticking points. It’s possible you weren’t part of those aspects or you just saw it differently than Apple did.
On the other hand, this was all before Apple had a public marketing campaign around user privacy. The antagonism in the relationship around Maps also predated any discussion with Google of location data or ads and it arose from Android. Jobs saw Android as an attempt to copy the iPhone, and this lead to mistrust of Google in all things.
With that perspective, maybe you can start to see the other side of it. Apple didn’t want to let slip any detail of upcoming iPhone features because the concern was about them being copied in Android. While the G Maps folks gave lip service initially to being separate from Android and the idea that features wouldn’t be held back from Apple to benefit Android (and this was true initially, eg with Street View), Apple folks didn’t believe that would last.
And I think it didn’t last. As time went on, the Apple perspective was that Google was asking for things that were anathema, just so Google could point to them and say this is why you aren’t getting vector data or nav, but only as a pretext in the larger war of being able to use Maps as a competitive advantage for Android.
Yes, that's all probably true. I didn't delve into the wider politics of the iPhone vs Android wars but that was certainly a part of the reason for Apple not working closer with the Maps team.
It's unfortunate that Android became something of a self-fulfilling prophecy in this regard. It was created largely because of the experience of Maps trying to make mobile clients in a fragmented space with poor APIs (J2ME, Symbian, etc). Then Apple effectively took over the frontends of Google's most important services and in many ways did it much worse than the Maps team themselves did, but the popularity of the iPhone rendered much of their work useless. Google didn't at that time care about phones with the same burning passion Jobs did: Android was first and foremost a strategic play. Many Googlers, even senior Googlers, were happy to be seen using and praising their iPhones. But the inverse was also true: Jobs didn't care about Maps with the same passion that Brin & Page did. It should have been possible to forge a genuine collaboration, there were certainly no technical barriers.
Unfortunately Jobs' bizarre and self-destructive belief that the iPhone should effectively never have serious competition put both companies on the path to ultimate divorce. Users are still feeling the effects of that today. His paranoia about other companies copying them was also misplaced: as far as Maps were concerned the problem was rather the opposite; Google wasn't copying Apple's features, Apple was copying Google's features, but only after much pressure and negotiation!
Apple also had a schizophrenic attitude to advertising: their total refusal to integrate ads into iOS Maps meant that Google was destined to bleed vast sums of money on mobile maps forever, and the more popular the iPhone became, the more money they'd bleed. This was no strong principle as Apple tried to launch its own ad network which sucked and was quickly forgotten about, so it looked a lot like some sort of psycho "revenge" for Android - a project which had been initiated before the iPhone project itself had. Jobs seemed to believe that the moment he announced the iPhone Android should have been cancelled and anyone not willing to pay his steep prices abandoned to J2ME feature phones for good.
Very, very few companies would be willing to tolerate another company totally controlling the entire user interface of their online service, blocking their only revenue stream and in an environment with almost no cooperation (i.e. Google would find out about what features Apple had added at about the same time everyone else did). Although it was understandable in the very first versions of their Maps app were written in house whilst the APIs and product were still baking, it became less and less tenable with time. Separate apps was the obvious way to resolve that problem, but Apple forbade that too.
If I recall correctly the straw that broke the camel's back was actually social. Google at the time was desperately concerned about Facebook. They worried that Facebook was an existential threat to the popularity of their services because Facebook had social features and Google didn't. So it tried to add social stuff to everything. This wasn't about Apple at all, it was all about Facebook, but Apple point-blank refused to add any social features to their app. I don't know why not, probably they felt it was a poor use of resources (which it would have been), but that was what triggered Google to write their own frontend app which then got banned.
Up until that point Android had been seen to a large extent as a way to drag the rest of the phone industry into the post-iPhone age, rather than something specifically designed to go after Apple. There was no shame in senior Googler executives using iPhones. But Google saw the fate of Maps as a sign of the dystopian future awaiting them, in a world where Jobs controlled access to users with an iron fist. After that Android was ramped up significantly. It was in my view a huge strategic error by Jobs. Very few companies were able to make software competitive with theirs: Google was basically the only one. If Apple hadn't blocked Google from upgrading its services, it's very plausible Android would have pivoted more strongly into the budget/low end space Apple didn't care about anyway. Social-in-maps put paid to that idea and resulted in Android becoming an OS that is a match for iOS in every respect.
their total refusal to integrate ads into iOS Maps meant that Google was destined to bleed vast sums of money on mobile maps forever, and the more popular the iPhone became, the more money they'd bleed.
Google wasn’t giving Apple access to the Maps data for free. They were paying for it.
If Apple hadn't blocked Google from upgrading its services, it's very plausible Android would have pivoted more strongly into the budget/low end space Apple didn't care about anyway.
Android is in the budget/low end space. The average selling price of an Android phone is about 1/3 of an iPhone and Apple makes about 80% of the profit in mobile.
but that was what triggered Google to write their own frontend app which then got banned.
Google’s app was never “banned”. There were plenty of third party map apps when iOS 6 was introduced. iOS 6 was introduced in September 2012. Google Maps for iOS was released in December of 2012. Are you saying that Google wanted to release a separate maps app when Apple was still using Google maps before iOS 6?
Yes, and it's also in the high end iPhone competing space. We're not talking about prices here, we're talking about whether the devices have competitive specs and functionality.
Android dominates globally, even in the USA and on the top-end devices where Apple is strongest.
Are you saying that Google wanted to release a separate maps app when Apple was still using Google maps before iOS 6?
We're not talking about prices here, we're talking about whether the devices have competitive specs and functionality.
Not really, the majority of Android phones are slower than iPhones. In fact, it wasn’t until 2018 that high end Samsung phones were faster in single core performance than the 2015 6S.
Android definitely doesn’t “dominate” on the top end by any definition - sales or profits.
Isn’t it a Pyrrhic victory to sell millions of devices and make no money from them? Of course we have no way of knowing how the Chinese brands are doing.
Yes, long before. We're going way back here.
There is an existence proof that this wasn’t true. It wasn’t until the 3GS/iOS 3 that Apple allowed any app to have real time turn by turn directions. There were plenty of third party Maps apps that had turn by turn directions by iOS 4 in 2010. So Apple explicitly banned Google but allowed other Maps apps?
You are incredibly sure you know more about this than me, despite the fact that I was there and saw it all unfold from the inside. Yes, Apple blocked Google's maps app. That's why when Latitude launched, it launched as a web app on iOS despite having a much inferior user experience to a native app.
As for people making no money off of Android phones, come on, are you serious? That's completely delusional iOS fandom: Samsung alone makes around $2.5 billion a quarter off of their mobile division. The idea that Apple is the only one making mobile profits is bizarre and wrong, but also strange for another reason: why would customers want Apple to make huge profits? That's good only for Apple shareholders and bad for iPhone users, who have (as far as I recall) never seen prices fall despite the actual hardware becoming massively cheaper. Someone is a sucker here, but it isn't anyone buying or selling Android phones!
The GMaps team was much larger and better funded than the iOS team, so iOS rapidly fell behind the featureset available on Android and the web. Google attempted to fix this by writing their own GMaps app, which Apple then blocked on the grounds it was competitive with their own (this was back when they had this policy)
Since the integrated map apps didn’t have turn by turn directions, there were plenty of 3rd party apps that were in the App Store. I used MapQuest. This was during the iOS 4 era.
Apple had a policy that no maps app could use turn by turn directions until iOS 3 or 4.
I’m of course in no position to know the technical details of the Apple Maps/Google Maps spat. But the negotiations as far as licensing wasn’t happening on the engineering level - it was happening on much higher levels of the org chart. Are you sure you had the entire political picture?
But now Apple is disadvantages competing maps apps by making all maps links open in Apple Maps. It sucks. As a Google Maps user I have tons of labels and bookmarks in Google Maps. When I click a maps link in any iOS app I get shuffled over to Apple Maps and then have to try to find a way to manually copy the address over to Google Maps so I can add a bookmark and access it in other places.
