If I Were Google, I Wouldn’t Release A Native iOS 6 Maps App For Six Months

For Apple to cripple such a fantastic feature and leave themselves at the mercy of their arch-rival - whom they've been energetically suing - is baffling.

Not being able to visually see bus routes (without clicking on another link) and the directions, and then also compare them to walking times is a big feature missing in the mobile web version. It also suffers from a large "below the fold" problem where on my iPhone 4S I cannot see the directions because the inputs for the start and end location take up so much space. It took me a while before I realized that Google had already loaded my directions.

The only upside to mobile is having access to bike routes.

It is really bad, and if navigating a city is one of your key phone usage scenarios, this change makes Apple's arch-rival's devices significantly more attractive than they otherwise would be.

I carry around both the latest Apple phone and the latest Google phone, and this is one area where the Google phone was already significantly superior, even before this fairly astonishing regression in iOS 6. Now the gap is much wider.

Google could (mostly) fix that for Apple by releasing a Google maps app, but why should they?

If I were in Google's shoes, I wouldn't be launching a native Maps app. Period.

It's not like Maps is driving vast amounts of search revenue for Google. And with the degraded functionality of Apple's own Maps app, Google's Map app has become a reason for a buyer to consider switching to a Google-blessed Android phone.

And I say this as a long-time iPhone user - Maps was an important application for me. Now that it's become less functional, I'm going to actively look at Android and WP.