There a more intrinsic reason why Google / Apple get the attention while many others do not.

Maybe some of it is captured here in the blog post by Scoble (the egoist).

One major reason is that Apple and Goole have a penchant for releasing a complete working product when they announce it instead of some half-baked product with a announcement long before the completed product is expected in market.

When Latitude news came out - it was ready for use in all the devices they mentioned (which was quite a lot) with only the iPhone announcement as coming soon.

Another thing I really liked was that in Google maps on my N95 - Google allows you to select friend contact from your contact list - and filter it out by various cariteri - its so helopful - that I didnt have to enter any contact by hand - they were all found from within Gmail's addresses. THAT's the kind of complete interaction with google's own products which amazes. Its the level of completeness which is lacking in many other apps from other manfacturers.