While it's true that the article perhaps goes a bit too far without knowing much, I can't think of many other reasons other than that Apple is screwing Google because it is planning to integrate this feature into its own software. As a web app, Google Latitude is essentially useless.

On the other hand, this and the lack of an official google voice app (which, anyways, probably won't be able to fully integrate into the phone unlike on the Android) is giving Google plenty of opportunity to tout the benefits of competing phones.