Google’s Executive Chairman, Eric Schmidt, was in Japan to announce the Nexus 7 being available there, and he left us with a few words on the Maps debacle on iOS. If you didn’t know, with iOS6, Apple decided to drop all Google apps (Maps and YouTube) and use their own variants. They included Apple Maps, built off data from TomTom and another company they had purchased. However, these new maps are geographically inaccurate and just broken in many ways.

“We think it would have been better if they had kept ours. But what do I know?” Schmidt said. “What were we going to do, force them not to change their mind? It’s their call.” He also said that Google and Apple were in communications “at all kinds of levels” and in relation to a Google Maps app for iOS, it would be Apple’s call to approve it for the App Store and that “We have not done anything yet.”

An interesting statement, one we aren’t sure we completely agree with but is still valid and to an extent true, is that “the Android system is the common model, which is why our market share is so much higher,” and that it’s often ignored because the media is “obsessed with Apple’s marketing events and Apple’s branding. That’s great for Apple but the numbers are on our side.” A bold statement.

Schmidt was also showing off the Google Maps app on the Nexus 7. He showed a feature where you can move the device around, which moves the map, like looking around. Then he says, “Take that Apple. That was a joke by the way.” Stay classy.

Reuters