WSJ: ‘Apple and Google Expand Battle to Mobile Map Apps’

Jessica Vascellaro and Amir Efrati, reporting for the WSJ:

Apple has fought back, invading Google’s advertising turf by selling mobile ads. And last year it unveiled its new weapon against Google’s search business, the voice-activated “virtual assistant” named Siri that gives people a new way to search for information from the iPhone.

Some Google executives privately say they think Apple is trying to wean iPhone users away from using traditional Web search on its phones.

“Privately”? There’s nothing private or secretive about it. Just watch one of Apple’s Siri TV ads. And it wouldn’t be a story about Google without something like this:

On Halloween in 2006 — just months before the iPhone was announced — Apple’s product-marketing head, Phil Schiller, and other executives met with Google engineers to determine how the iPhone could use Google’s mapping data to let people see their locations and get directions. At the meeting, one Google employee attended wearing a nun costume.

★ Tuesday, 5 June 2012