This reason was dismissed in the article:<p><i>You say it's a patent issue? Nothing's changed since the last time I walked that lonely road: I still have yet to see an Apple patent that covers the pinch-to-zoom gesture, and Palm, Microsoft, and a laundry list of other companies are all now using the move without consequence. Besides, it's freaking Google -- the same company that up and decided copyright law was broken and started scanning out of print books because it wanted to try something new. Even if there is some mythical Apple patent on pinch-to-zoom, Google is one of the few companies that has the financial and legal resources to get it invalidated -- and there's plenty of prior art out there that'll help it along the way.</i>