> I don't think for a second that they did this for any altruistic reasons. I think it had more to do with Google not shipping concurrent features for Google Ma

> I don't think for a second that they did this for any altruistic reasons. I think it had more to do with Google not shipping concurrent features for Google Maps on iOS. The messaging at the time was that as the Google Maps deal was ending, it turned out that all the features were on the table during renegotiation - but Google wanted accounts and location tracking and advertising in the core maps app. Google's claim is that they had no strategic info that Apple Maps was going to be released. The general feeling of the public is that Apple's QA department also had no info that it was going to be released. However, I suspect Apple knew that convergence of the phone with a GPS was a critical feature and thus they had to build and buy and bite and claw their way to have a competitive offering they controlled. Google's push for user telemetry during that renegotiation cycle may have prompted Apple to accelerate, and to launch before it was really ready. That said, Google was never going to stand still with Maps, so they had to launch with a feature deficit at some time to justify the product investment. Google and Apple have their own data sets and their own teams dedicated to tools as well as manual curation of that data.