Apple (Maps?) to Compete With Google Maps

In an interesting turn of events, Apple has done something that could make the gap between them and Google even wider. And just when you though Apple couldn’t get more into Google’s bad books after rejecting the Google Voice and Maps app for the iPhone.

It seems like Apple is preparing to build a map service of its own. Either that or Steve Jobs just likes to anger Google by purchasing a rival company. Apple has purchased a company called PlaceBase who offered a Map service not unlike Google Maps and offered an API called PushPin. This whole thing smacks of Apple taking on Google. Eric Schmidt was so right in stepping down from the Apple board. But we are all pretty much sure that it was more personal hurt than the FCC probing the case.

Back then when FCC first started, people were of the opinion that Google and Apple hardly have things in common to warrant this probe by the FCC. Now it looks like things are changing fast.

This buy out was done quite silently and it happened a long time back in July. It was not flashed anywhere and had it not been for twitter, this whole fiasco would probably have surfaced much later on. It happened this way that the founder of a company called Openspaces.org, Fred Lalonide, tweeted about this happening because his company uses the Placebase software. He mentioned the silent nature of the deal and said that the PushPin site was taken down.

This tweet was spotted by Seth Weintrub from Computerworld and he reported in on the ComputerWorld blog. From there on, it just spread like wildfire. Everyone is of course busy speculating what’s going to happen now.

PushPin Website Screnshot courtesy Crunchbase

Well, Apple will of course be their usual secretive self and not reveal what they intend to do with the PlaceBase team. Weintrub reports that the former CEO is now part of the ‘Geo Team’ at Apple. Other than the obvious fact of it being related to building maps, nothing else is apparent. This is just like when Apple bought PA Semi, although that was mainly for the star engineers of the company. Now they are busy with something but no one quite knows what it is. So Apple is likely to keep the PlaceBase team busy with a secret project that will bear fruit ones the green signal comes from the top honcho(s).

How Google will react to this is unknown but Google’s wide reach is something that no other company can dream of rivaling unless is it is open ource like OpenStreetMap.org. Apple is probably looking at something highly integrated and proprietary.

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