• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, December 13, 2012

To Apple’s chagrin, Google Maps returning to the iPhone this week is getting more good press than a chimp in space.

“Hallelujah!” The Atlantic exclaims.  

“Call it an early Christmas gift from Google,” ABC News gushes.

Fortune, meanwhile, can’t wait to tell readers about “10 cool things about Google’s new Maps app for iPhone.”

Yet all the excitement only magnifies Apple’s failure to launch a successful mapping app of its own -- proving to some that, for all its successes, the company has serious Web service shortcomings.

Indeed, Apple dropping its Maps contract with Google was “one of the biggest tech headlines of the year,” The New York Times reminds us. “Apple preferred to write a new app, based on a new database of the world that Apple intended to assemble itself.”

Summing up Apple’s folly, Reuters writes: “Google's navigation tool has returned to the iPhone, months after Apple's home-grown mapping service flopped, prompting user complaints, the firing of an executive and a public apology from Apple's CEO.”

“Unlike Apple’s maps app, Google’s navigation feature isn’t integrated with Siri,” writes Wired. “But it’s also much less likely to direct you into the Pacific Ocean.” Zing!

“The addition, however, doesn’t let Apple off the hook for improving its own Maps, which is playing catchup with Google as it tries to gather the amount and quality of navigation data it needs to bridge the gap between the two apps,” The Washington Post writes.