Apps were just an excuse for Jobs to own the iPhone platform. It's why they killed Flash - they didn't want a cross-platform way to develop apps and marginalize their plans.
This is nonsense as initially Apple was pushing web apps, it actually took a lot of convincing to get them to move to native code. Flash never provided a good user experience.
If you believe that Apple ever really intended web apps to be the only apps, I've got a bridge to sell you.
The only reason they released a year earlier than their native app SDK was to get their product out in front of competition that they knew was coming so they could claim they were "first".
Those were early prototypes. Google didn't make it into a touch interface in a single year.
The exact UI doesn't matter anyway. Apple knew they had something and they knew Google had resources to compete. Don't forget that these companies compete over hiring talent as well.
Apple never, ever planned on only web apps and there's no evidence of that.
They told people just to make html5 webpages for the first year or so of the iPhone.
The first third party native apps were people who managed to get the gcc toolchain to emit a binary that the iPhone could run.
Then the App Store came out a few months later. Native apps caught on very well over just making html5 sites for iPhone users, because, in a lot of cities, AT&T's network just couldn't support all the users' very well. Even then, you were limited to a max of something like 20 (?).
This is nonsense as initially Apple was pushing web apps, it actually took a lot of convincing to get them to move to native code. Flash never provided a good user experience.