RedLaser was released on May 15, 2009. It works with original, 3G, and 3gs iPhones (although it is faster on 3gs). It was released for the pure need for that scanning barcodes was very subpar on the iPhone. They were the first (and I think still the only, most others license their tech) app on the iPhone to do barcode recognition straight on the phone (no need to take a picture or send it to a server to be 'read'). Until very recently that wasn't possible with horribly slow Android SDK.
The app compareAnywhere won the Android ADC 1 Contest. Here is a link below: http://code.google.com/android/adc/adc_gallery/app.html?id=8
That was in 2008!
You couldn't do bar code scanning on the iPhone until 3GS came out (I think I am right on this).
So this was an idea out there since 2008. The red laser team were the first one to execute it on the iPhone 3GS.
I also have high regard for the Google team for correctly accessing the value of this idea.