The fallout on the iPhone from the Google-Apple divorce
What will iPhone users lose now that Apple and Google aren't bunkmates?
Follow @infoworldGoogle's Eric Schmidt has given up his seat on Apple's board of directors, closing a partnership that paved the way for the success of Apple and Google in the mobile space. Neither company could have risen so far, so fast without the other. Apple made the Google Maps pushpin and the YouTube skateboarding dog iconic of the iPhone's utility, simplicity, and flexibility; the iPhone was, in effect, the first Google phone.
Google Maps and YouTube, with Safari, rounded out the iPhone's killer app trifecta. That Apple gave Google equal billing was unprecedented, and I think that relationship set Google up for its current role as go-to software supplier for handset makers and wireless operators, which in turn enabled Google to move into the mobile cloud business with Gmail, Google Talk, Google Sync, Google Voice and voice search, Google Latitude, and other services.
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Every new smartphone, regardless of platform, is now expected to hit the streets prewired for Google services, and I think that the speed with which a mobile platform takes on new Google services, and new releases of Google client-side apps, will partly determine that platform's success and customers' satisfaction.
The iPhone stands apart from Google's other mobile platforms in its lack of support for third-party background applications, making the iPhone a disadvantaged peer among growing numbers of devices connected via Google's cloud. iPhone clients for Google Talk and Google Voice are not in the offing, and with this restriction, it's also impossible to make Google's Latitude location tracking service work unless the Latitude site is active in Safari. Google Sync, being based on the Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync protocol licensed and implemented on the iPhone and for which a systemwide background listener is already in place, is an exception. I think that even if Google Sync couldn't hitch a ride on iPhone's Exchange client support, Apple would have made an exception to sync with Google's free cloud. But that was then.
