Google Latitude Goes iPhone via Web App … sigh

So Google Latitude finally arrives on the iPhone and it comes through as a web app?! One one hand you have to admire the skill in which it was programmed by the Google team. Speed is nice and quick, features are rich including pinch zoom and it generally looks like a native app. But it’s not.

Native applications get different access … If this had been part of the actual Maps application – like it is on every Google Maps app that runs on every other platform, you’d have access to your favorites and it might even potentially run in the background – but not.

Instead apparently Apple demanded that it live as a web app over the native app Google had already written.  Apparently the reason is to avoid confusion between Maps and Latitude, yet on every other platform Latitude is a layer that simply loads on top of the map… This decision simply defies all logic for me.  The evolution of the platform goes to native apps from web apps as and back again?  NO!