Google’s finally released their Latitude location service for iPhone—unfortunately, it’s a lame web app. Originally, it was a real application. But Apple thought we would all be horribly confused.
Here’s how it went down with Apple, according to Google:
We worked closely with Apple to bring Latitude to the iPhone in a way Apple thought would be best for iPhone users. After we developed a Latitude application for the iPhone, Apple requested we release Latitude as a web application in order to avoid confusion with Maps on the iPhone, which uses Google to serve maps tiles.
Which, it’s all fine and dandy that Google thinks web apps are the future, but there’s no way anybody’s going to use Latitude on the iPhone if it’s not built into the Maps application like it is on Android. Maybe that’s what Apple wants. (Without being able to run in the background, usage was already going to be pretty limited anyway.)
https://gizmodo.com/you-can-bet-chrome-os-is-coming-to-smartphones-5316239
Besides, if it’s inside of Maps, how is that going to confuse anybody? Unless we’re all really, really dumb. [Google Mobile via TechCrunch]
