[beloch]

Google itself might not want iOS to have this feature. If they can keep their apps sufficiently far ahead of Apple's, power users will use them in spite of the extra hassle. Some of those power users will feel like they're getting a second-rate experience with iOS and might switch to Android. If they could functionally swap native iOS apps out for Google apps such that there's zero hassle to using them, iOS power users would feel like they had the best of both worlds and have zero motivation to switch platforms.

Power users certainly aren't the majority of the market, but they do tend to steer things. There are, of course, many barriers that keep users from switching platforms, but every little bit helps.

[defap]

Some used this same argument to suggest that Google wouldn't want to ship an iOS Google Maps app, and yet, lo and behold, it shipped two weeks ago to great fanfare. To think that Google would not want to participate in an ecosystem as large as iOS because not doing so might drive some small percentage of those users to Android is ridiculous.