Apple-Google split: A divorce made in heaven?
Kai Ryssdal: It can be such a shame when a relationship goes downhill. When what we all thought was a match made in heaven crumbles before our very eyes.
Lest you think we’ve turned the broadcast over the editors of Us Weekly, I’m talking here about Apple and Google. A couple of months ago, Apple said it’s gonna boot Google Maps when its new operating system comes out later this year. Now, as of last night, we found out YouTube is gonna be disappeared as well.
Marketplace’s Queena Kim has the latest on high-tech’s biggest break up.
Queena Kim: Not too long ago, Apple and Google were sweethearts. There was Apple, so sleak, stylish and popular! And Google wow, does she have some brains on her — she knows everything on the web. And she’s got maps and YouTube.
Eric Goldman is the director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University. He says, it was the classic case of opposites attract.
Eric Goldman: Apple coming out of a hardware manufacturing environment Google coming out of a a content and for a long time they were complimentary.
Sarah Rotman Epps is an analyst at Forrester Research. And she says, like so many relationships, it was an affair that broke them up. In this case, Google acquired Android, a mobile operating system, and it now runs on more than half the smartphones in the world. Epps says from Apple’s perspective:
Sarah Rotman Epps: It’s like I woke up and I don’t even recognize you anymore. You know, the relationship we used to have is no longer what we thought it was.
Google makes money by being on Apple. By some estimates, about 40-percent of Google’s mobile revenues will come from Apple this year. And to add insult to injury, some of that money, presumably, goes to funding Android. And that raises the question, now that Apple has kicked Google Maps and YouTube off its mobile operating system: Is Google’s search next?
Carolina Milanesi is an analyst at Gartner. She says probably not.
Carolina Milanesi: I think at the end of the day it’s all about making sure they don’t upset their users.
And right now, consumers love Google. And divorce aside, you have to do what’s right for the kids, right?
I’m Queena Kim for Marketplace.
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