So is Google’s own widely praised contextual search app coming to iOS soon or not? At an event in India on Thursday, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt wasn’t very forthcoming with a definitive answer. But depending on how you read into what he said, Google may have already submitted the app to the iOS App Store for review. Or maybe it hasn’t.
At the Google Big Tent Summit, he was asked by the event’s moderator when Google Now would come to iOS. His response? Well, he played coy, as Mahendra Palsule noted on Twitter:
Alan: "When can I get Google Now on my iPhone?" Schmidt: "You'll have to ask Apple" #BigTentIndia—
Mahendra Palsule (@ScepticGeek) March 21, 2013
Schmidt went on to say, somewhat cryptically, “Apple has a policy of approving or disapproving apps that are submitted into its store, and some of them they approve and some of them they don’t.” That could be read as a hint that Google is simply waiting for Apple to approve the app.
The reason the question is on many people’s minds is because last week a video surfaced online that was purportedly a promotional video for Google Now coming to the iOS platform. The video seemed to have the same narrator as an earlier video promoting Google Now for Android, but the iOS video was promptly pulled from YouTube after discovery; usually that’s a tell-tale sign the promotion is legitimate.
Google Now was very well received when it was launched as part of the Android Jelly Bean operating system in mid-2012. By knowing the user’s location, the time of day, and search habits, it can offer properly contextualized search results.
It seems a lock that Google would want it to be on iOS. Google Now is a solid competitor to Apple’s own Siri. And Google has made it its goal to make better iOS apps than Apple, recent releases and revamps of Google apps for iOS include Capture, YouTube for iPhone and iPad, Google Maps, Gmail, Google Voice Search and Chrome for iOS.
Update: Well, Apple has shot down one possibility: the company told some news outlets that Google has not submitted a Google Now app for review.
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