Used a friend’s android phone. When I went to the maps app and searched for “Coffee shop”, it dropped pins on a map to show me several nearby coffee shops, just like maps on my iphone does. BUT – it also showed a “sponsored ad” for a particular store as a mini-popup at the top.
Is that just some plugin my friend has, or does android’s maps app really show ads? The maps app on iphone has never shown me any ad. I could understand that maybe google is showing ads on their phones, that’s how they make money. But in that case, how come I’ve never heard anyone mention this in the “why my iphone is better than your droid” flame wars?
Does the default, out-of-the-box maps application on android really show ads? And Google provides the maps app for both android and iphone? But they don’t show ads on iphone? If so, how did Google give iphone a marketing advanatage like that? And why isn’t Apple exploiting that?