They deprecated a mapping API in AOSP because AOSP is not tied to a cloud service and should not depend on cloud services. AOSP on its own cannot assume that a

They deprecated a mapping API in AOSP because AOSP is not tied to a cloud service and should not depend on cloud services. AOSP on its own cannot assume that a mapping service is available, and neither can Android apps. For the same reason, there are no app store, social networking or cloud storage APIs in AOSP. AOSP does not depend on a cloud service. They introduced a mapping API for Google Maps in Play Services because Play Services contains all client libraries for Google's services. The Google Services APIs are a container for all libraries to consume Google's cloud services. This is not symptomatic of Google's evilness.