Such are the vagaries of being a large corporation -- your various departments' goals become increasingly at odds with one another. The Android team wants their platform to be successful. Part of that means not releasing top-tier applications for competing platforms. Gmail wants their service to be successful. Part of that means releasing top-tier applications for as many platforms as possible.

It's clear, here, that Google places Gmail below Android in their list of priorities. I'm curious about which one of those departments earns more money, though, and which one is more strategically important for the long-term success of Google.

John Siracusa explains this same scenario as it appears to be happening at Apple extremely well in this episode of his fantastic podcast: http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/8

Why not? If Google gives me a crappy mail app on my iPhone I am definitely not switching to Android. On the other hand, if it is high quality I may actually be tempted to switch.

Might not be everyone's cup of tea, but the gmail mobile web app is actually pretty great.