In recent years, especially Poly9 has given birth to programming interfaces (APIs) for several large clients such as Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, MSNBC and NORAD,” Couture reports. Poly9 based in part on the base maps of Google Earth, Google Maps, MapQuest, of Platial, Urban Mapping and many others to give birth to its applications.
Since the acquisition, the majority of employees Poly9 left Quebec to settle in the offices of software giant located in the Silicon Valley, California. Only two employees Poly9 have not followed the caravan for family reasons. They remained in Quebec and are now working on their own, Couture reports. Officially, there is still a Poly9 in Québec and it holds a single address in the Saint-Jean-Baptiste. It is known however that the headquarters of the company, located on rue Saint-Joseph, was closed a few weeks ago.
Couture reports that no former employee of the company was willing to openly discuss the transaction. One of the employees very politely said that they have signed confidentiality agreements.
Full article (via Google French-English translation) here.
MacDailyNews Note: Poly9’s website has gone blank, but The WayBack Machine reveals their work on mapping and telephony, among other things.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Denis” for the heads up.]
Sounds like a cool place to work.
Poly9 want a cracker…?
Mysterious….
Always wanted to know what the placebase boys and girls where bought for. Now we have 2 such companies to speculate about.
Me hopes a new version of maps for all Apple’s platforms, with clever geospatial overlays in a minority report stylee…..
Jobs said SIRI was bought as an AI company- not search. Bought an online streaming music ( read data ) company. Now they are buying a mapping company.
Are they on a collision course with Google?
They created mapspread.com and they also the video creator from google search stories.
http://www.youtube.com/searchstories
Product website still up
Linkedin: http://aptgeek.com/about/
Apple was able to get visas pretty easily, which means these folks had something that no US company had. Wonder what that could be……
I don’t think Apple is looking to compete directly with Google on these things.
I would say it seems like some cool new stuff is going to wind up in the iOS API in the near future. Apple is going to let 1000s of developers chip away at Google
Allo la Californie
This has to be the most poorly written article, ever!
That is until I read MDNs disclaimer. Snork.
I read a number of sentences more than once, trying to make sense of it.
Terrific acquisition though, regardless of how it’s presented.
Well, if you want Maps en francais, Poly9 are the go to guys and girls.
@ G4Dualie–
The article was translated from French to English, using Google.
The words themselves were left unaltered.
I don’t know why that is such a mystery for you.
This is the second mapping company Apple has bought recently, Placebase being the first…
If anyone doubt that Apple is planning an alternative to Google maps and possibly even Google earth, then keep your heads in the sand. Google’s smugness over competing with trusting partner, Apple, armed with fist hand insight gained in confidential Apple board meetings, is but a case of temporary gloat.
Until the day that Apple makes up for that bad faith move and plays a big one back, Google had better think of more than it’s undeniable great search engine as it’s goose that lays the golden eggs, because in reality it’s all they got.
Cupertino’s copiers in progress…. stay tune to find out…..
From now on bing and decide. http://www.bing.com
Want a non-internet based mapping gps route program asap.
I use Delorme on my Windows partition, and have tested Microsoft Streets and Trips. Very difficult to use.
There used to be a Mac app called Route 66, did not make the jump to OSX. Loved it, very easy to use.
Would love to plug my GPS sensor into something that works.
Re: kenh
“There used to be a Mac app called Route 66, did not make the jump to OSX. Loved it, very easy to use.”
Yes it did. I have it installed on my MacBookPro now(It’s a Carbon app). I purchased this app about 2002, but shortly after I bought it, they discontinued the Mac application and only offered it as a Win Mobil/Palm application. I pair my wireless Bluetooth GPS unit to the Mac and Route 66 sees it and I have vehicle tracking in the application. Works Great! I built a small platform for my 13″ MacBook Pro to set on the passenger front seat and use a 12V to 120v inverter to power the MacBook. Of course, there hasn’t been any map updates in years. I finally purchased a Garmin 1490T a couple of months ago and really like it, especially the recalculation feature where if you get off the marked route the Garmin recalculates the route. Route 66 never had that feature.
A pacer and no PR attempt or other milestone objective? What gives?