Apple to Google: We're Not Lost! We'll Find Our Own Way!

Ars Technica reports: Apple has had a fairly comfortable relationship with Google in the past—CEO Eric Schmidt had a place on Apple's board, Google is the default search for its Safari browser, and Google Maps and YouTube are first-class applications on the iPhone. Apple has even created a maps API that allows iPhone developers to easily include Google Map data directly into their own apps. However, earlier this year Apple bought a small startup that created its own Google Maps competitor. The purchase may be a sign that growing competition between the two companies—which resulted in the recent resignation of Schmidt from Apple's board—could be causing a rift in the once-friendly alliance.

Apple bought online mapping company Placebase in July of this year. The only source of the information at the time was a tweet from a company that used Placebase's PushPin API, noting the deal was "all hush-hush." Though Apple made no public announcement, the purchase was confirmed yesterday when Computerworld noticed that founder and CEO Jaron Waldman listed his current position as working in the "Geo Team" at Apple. Furthermore, websites for both Placebase and the PushPin API now just redirect to documentation for the API.

Location-based services have become a killer use for smartphones with integrated GPS hardware, and Apple has been at the forefront of enabling these services for its iPhone by providing the CoreLocation API for iPhone OS. Developers can use CoreLocation to provide location-sensitive information, such as nearby restaurants in Yelp, or nearby tweets in Tweetie. CoreLocation has also migrated to the desktop, allowing Snow Leopard users to set their time zone based on location data.

When geo-location data needs to be visualized, however, Google Maps has been the go-to source for mapping data. It's in the Maps application on the iPhone, in the mapping API Apple provides to developers, and in the Places feature in iPhoto. The PushPin API offers richer data integration features than those currently offered by Google Maps, though what Apple might want to do with the additional power is anyone's guess at this point in time. It's worth noting, though, that PushPin won't replace the directions and Street View features currently provided by Google Maps.

The relationship between Google and Apple has been chilled somewhat as of late, particularly centered on the rejection of both Google Latitude and Google Voice apps from the App Store. The rejection of the latter has prompted an FCC investigation into the matter, which so far seems far from resolved. The FTC still has an ongoing investigation into possible collusion between the companies related to the continued presence of Arthur Levinson on the boards of both companies.

As Google continues to offer additional competition in spaces like mobile OS (Android), browser (Chrome), and even desktop OS (Chrome OS), though, Apple may just be hedging its bet by having a backup mapping technology that Placebase provides.