From what I understand search and ad revenue is one of Apple's revenue streams - I have no idea how large nor how to project growth. Just rehashing a vague memo

From what I understand search and ad revenue is one of Apple's revenue streams - I have no idea how large nor how to project growth. Just rehashing a vague memory. Anyway I think there are plenty of good reasons for Apple to pursue its own maps solution; eventually all technology will be fully location-gnostic, so it seems like a pretty critical technology to me. If I were Apple I wouldn't be happy leaving that in the hands of a malicious competitor either. And when you have one of the world's largest customer bases to beta-test with... why not? Seems like pulling a tooth to me - best just to get it over with quickly, and you're glad once you do. You call it compromising the quality of a core service, Apple might argue that effectively unless that service was in-house it was not adequate, so effectively never existed, and what they've done is get started on building the service they should have had a while ago.