Why Is Google Latitude A Web App And Not A Native App? Because Apple Said So.
We briefly pointed this out in our longer post on Google Latitude launching on the iPhone, but it’s worth pointing this out separately. In its post today, Google made an unusual admission about its service: It apparently built a native Latitude app for the iPhone, but Apple asked it to make it a web app, so Google did that instead.
Here’s their actual wording:
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.
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