“According to 9to5Mac, Apple may be making ready the way to replace Google Maps with their own web-based mapping solution,” E. Werner Reschke writes for TGAAP.
“Currently on iCloud.com beta Apple maps are now being used for Find My iPhone,” Reschke writes. “While Apple still uses Google Maps on its website for retail store locations, it is not a stretch to see how Apple could soon replace Google Maps with Apple web-based maps instead. We can also think back to WWDC14 while Apple was showing off the enhanced Spotlight for OS X Yosemite, it was also replacing any web searches from Google’s search engine with Bing’s.”
“It is clear with every new move, Apple is setting a new direction — away from Google,” Reschke writes. “Apple is going right to the heart of Google’s main revenue stream — search and maps. It are these two apps that fund most of the other enterprises Google ‘gives away’ for free — including the development of the rival mobile platform Android.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Inexorably, the door closes, shutting out Google from the world’s most desirable customers. Apple harvests the wheat. Wallow in the chaff, Google.
As we wrote nearly three years ago on August 8, 2011:
Google will rue the day they decided to get greedy by working against Apple instead of with them.
As we explained back in November 2012:
Google made a crucial mistake: They gave away Android to “partners” who pushed and continue to push the product into the hands of the exact opposite type of user that Google needs for Android to truly thrive. Hence, Android is a backwater of second-rate, or worse, app versions that are only downloaded when free or ad-supported – but the Android user is notoriously cheap, so the ads don’t sell for much because they don’t work very well. You’d have guessed that Google would have understood this, but you’d have guessed wrong. Google built a platform that depends heavily on advertising support, but sold it to the very type of customer who’s the least likely to patronize ads.
iOS users are the ones who buy apps, so developers focus on iOS users. iOS users buy products, so accessory makers focus on iOS users. iOS users have money and the proven will to spend it, so vehicle makers focus on iOS users. Etcetera. Android can have the “Hee Haw” demographic. Apple doesn’t want it or need it; it’s far more trouble than it’s worth.
And, as we wrote back in September 2012:
Have fun tracking and trying to sell ads bound for your cheapskate “Buy One Get X Free” Fragmandroid pigeons. This is all Google’s loss: iOS users are the ones with money to spend and the will to spend it; you’ll have no access to hundreds of millions of the world’s cream-of-the-crop consumers…
That’s right, the world’s best, most well-heeled mobile consumers do not use Google Maps.
Meanwhile, Apple’s Maps will relentlessly continue to improve…
Let Google’s rueing continue unabated.
Related articles:
Apple drops Google for Bing as iOS, OS X default Spotlight search engine – June 4, 2014
Apple Maps puts the hurt on Google Maps – November 11, 2013
Apple Maps makes killer comeback as Google Maps loses access to world’s most desirable mobile customers – November 12, 2013