Google Chairman Eric Schmidt made some interesting comments about Google Maps for iOS in Tokyo last night, while demonstrating some features of Google Maps, noting that he thinks Apple should have stayed with Google Maps, and that Google has not submitted a new native Maps app to the App Store.
What’s interesting is that reports from Reuters, Bloomberg, and The Wall Street Journal each offer different accounts.
“We think it would have been better if they had kept ours. But what do I know?” Schmidt told a small group of reporters in Tokyo. “What were we going to do, force them not to change their mind? It’s their call.”
[…] he said any decision on whether Google Maps would be accepted as an application in the Apple App Store would have to be made by Apple. “We have not done anything yet,” he said.
Bloomberg also reports Schmidt’s statement that Google has not “done anything yet” towards submitting a native Google Maps app to the iOS App Store, noting that Apple would ultimately have to approve it in the end:
“We haven’t done anything yet with Google Maps,” Schmidt told reporters in Tokyo today. Apple would “have to approve it. It’s their choice,” Schmidt said, declining to say if the Mountain View, California-based company submitted an application to Apple for sale through its App Store.
Finally, The Wall Street Journal quotes Schmidt on the matter even further, again noting that he feels Apple should have kept Google Maps in iOS 6:
“In my opinion it would have been better to retain our maps,” he said. “It’s their decision, I’ll let them describe it.”
A recent (debunked) rumor suggested that Google had already submitted a Google Maps iOS app, and was just waiting to approve it. Judging from Jim Dalrymple of the Loop’s debunking, and the nature of Schmidt’s comments, it seems that’s probably not actually the case.
It’s still possible to use Google Maps on iOS 6 as a web app, however!
