Maybe but IIRC Google announced supporting app indexing on iOS prior to Apple announcing deep link searching in iOS9 and was already supporting it on Android 2 years[0] prior despite Facebook decision to support it today.

I see this more along the lines of Google continuing their objective of getting us the information we want when we want it. Mitigating threats to competitors is just really a benefit of them continuing their innovation with search.

[0] http://searchengineland.com/google-brings-app-indexing-suppo...