That's what the relationship was before Google withheld turn by turn directions and wanted more data than Apple was willing to give [1]: >But multiple sources

That's what the relationship was before Google withheld turn by turn directions and wanted more data than Apple was willing to give [1]: >But multiple sources familiar with Apple’s thinking say the company felt it had no choice but to replace Google Maps with its own, because of a disagreement over a key feature: Voice-guided turn-by-turn driving directions. >Spoken turn-by-turn navigation has been a free service offered through Google’s Android mobile OS for a few years now. But it was never part of the deal that brought Google’s Maps to iOS. And sources say Apple very much wanted it to be. Requiring iPhone users to look directly at handsets for directions and manually move through each step — while Android users enjoyed native voice-guided instructions — put Apple at a clear disadvantage in the mobile space. And having chosen Google as its original mapping partner, the iPhone maker was now in a position where an archrival was calling the shots on functionality important to the iOS maps feature set. >And this caused Apple — which typically enjoys very tight control over its products — no end of philosophical discomfort, sources say. Apple pushed Google hard to provide the data it needed to bring voice-guided navigation to iOS. But according to people familiar with Google’s thinking, the search giant, which had invested massive sums in creating that data and views it as a key feature of Android, wasn’t willing to simply hand it over to a competing platform. >And if there were terms under which it might have agreed to do so, Apple wasn’t offering them. Sources tell AllThingsD that Google, for example, wanted more say in the iOS maps feature set. It wasn’t happy simply providing back-end data. It asked for in-app branding. Apple declined. It suggested adding Google Latitude. Again, Apple declined. And these became major points of contention between the two companies, whose relationship was already deteriorating for a variety of other reasons, including Apple’s concern that Google was gathering too much user data from the app. I think it was a major strategic mistake on Google's part. But this was the heyday of Andy Rubin, and during that era Google was letting the tail wag the dog in trying to differentiate Android. They've since come to their senses and Android is back to being what it was always designed to be, a vessel for Google's services that actually make money. But that forced Apple to enter this business when they otherwise wouldn't have and now it will serve as a core technology from autonomous cars to AR. And since they're already sinking the capital and doing the grunt work to make Maps from scratch, they might as well earn some incremental revenue from it [2]. [1] http://allthingsd.com/20120926/apple-google-maps-talks-crashed-over-voice-guided-directions/ http://allthingsd.com/20120926/apple-google-maps-talks-crash... [2] https://developer.apple.com/maps/mapkitjs/ https://developer.apple.com/maps/mapkitjs/