Apparently over the last few weeks they've been sending out contracts to the developers of apps they're integrating with to obtain written permission to use their URL schemes. Google and Uber could've just said no or not responded.
This is according to Marco Arment a few minutes ago on the live recording of the Accidental Tech Podcast, who said he was asked to sign this document for his podcast app.
Google offers contracts and standard business relationships for some commercial uses of their API. Workflow could have reached out to the appropriate Google product person/lawyer, instead of sending a generic email as Marco speculates, if they were keen to use Google Translate instead of switching to Microsoft Translate.
Switching to Apple Maps exclusively over Google Maps is almost certainly a condition of the acquisition as I can't imagine Workflow would willing cripple their app that way, lack of Google email reply be dammed, without getting paid handsomely to do so
Just to be charitable - I can imagine Workflow enter discussions to be acquired and get told that they need to make sure that they have permission to link to those other apps by Apple Legal before anything can happen.
Being a small dev team, and not a corporation with a giant legal department, they panic at the amount of permissions they need to acquire (Workflow deals with a lot of apps) and rush through it as quickly as possible. Coupled with the fact that they, unlike Apple, are a tiny company that doesn't actually make much money off the app, so don't want to end up entering long-standing commercial agreements when the deal may still fall through.
Apple then insists that anything that they haven't had a formal agreement to on a particular date is removed from the app if they want the acquisition to proceed.
Whether that means that they now contact Google again is another question entirely (personally, given that the point of Workflow is to link as many apps together as possible I would hope so)
>Google offers contracts and standard business relationships for some commercial uses of their API. Workflow could have reached out to the appropriate Google product person/lawyer, instead of sending a generic email as Marco speculates, if they were keen to use Google Translate instead of switching to Microsoft Translate.
Sounds like you're speculating about details based on a second hand retelling of a podcast host's individual experience. A host who presumably doesn't have an "appropriate person/lawyer."
I was actually listening to the ATP podcast live as they were recording and I heard Marco's words in real time.
My remarks of the possibility of standardizing their Translation API use aren't speculation; Google's terms/offers are pretty public: https://cloud.google.com/translate/faq
While Marco tried to put a nice spin on it, it should be obvious why Workflow dropped Google services
This is according to Marco Arment a few minutes ago on the live recording of the Accidental Tech Podcast, who said he was asked to sign this document for his podcast app.