It’s been fairly clear that ever since Google departed from the Apple roadmap to develop Android (and their mobile strategy) on their own that Apple has been keen on removing Google’s presence from all its products.

What I find most interesting is that Apple has managed to largely rebrand and repackage content from third party information providers and label it as its own, while at the same time any criticism of their product’s failings will be met with a chorus of angry shouts from their legions of fanboys, silence from Apple, and the sense that it will get ‘better’ or that it’s magical or something (such is the marketing power of Apple, that it’s largely immune to that kind of criticism).

That being said, Google will really need to step up its game, because this is a core threat to their business model–no search, no ads, no money. I’ve made a series of suggestions to Google:
-‘freezing’ data on the Place (now Google+) page instead of trying to ‘improve’ it algorithmically;
– stepping up bug killing and focusing on the stability of their product rather than new ‘wow’ features that usually don’t work;
– adding in customer support (of the paid, telephone variety) to take some of the heat off the forums and out of the public eye;
– disabling some of the functionality of what is called the Dupe bot in MM land and the merge algo in Places,
– and instead of automatically merging listings send them into human-sighted moderation prior to approval (rather than the usual, separate the businesses six weeks later approach);
– better integration between the disparate Maps products: Places/Google+, Map Maker, etc. so that the data smoothly syncs from one database to another, and is consistent, with no visible disruption on the Place page;
– actively cleaning out the spam from their search indexes;
– and improving Report a problem’s responsiveness to issues.

Not sure they’ll listen (they have other problems, like trying to get the albatross of Google+ off the ground), but they’re going to have to work harder to make their products better, because they’re about to become less visible.

The latest misstep isn’t even their own doing, it’s what their enemies are doing and both their reactionary attempts to keep the ad dollar spigot flowing and the sclerotic bureaucracy impeding communication between teams that really surprises me.

I do, however, expect they’ll be releasing their own Maps product for the iOS system come Fall, possibly prior to the release of iOS6, but hopefully they’ll take Apple’s innovation as a sign they need to step up their game.

I echo most of the comments here in applauding the move by Apple. That company is really the only tech giant out there that can effectively challenge Google. If the competitive landscape stays the way it is then the company that will end up winning will be the one that can complete the cycle and provide reliable and unlimited data to their devices.

What do I mean by data? Go check out the new pricing plans being introduced by Verizon and ATT. It is really up to a third party to come in, take these companies (or their spectrum) over and un-throttle the data to the devices. Google and Apple can continue to evolve their product offerings to users but the users will be forced to minimize their usage due to monthly data caps and throttling.

As for the Apple maps product their downfall will be the reliance upon third party data vendors. I agree with Google’s goal of gathering and disseminating their own derived data, it eliminates gate keepers. The idea that I have to pay Localeeze just to get my data into the Apple world is ridiculous.

Localeze
Acxiom Manage Your Business Online
InfoUSA Express Update Service
UBL.org

All USA (for the most part) companies. Will it be YPG for Canada?

whew, that was fast. Mike, you work day and night… sometimes I worry about you 😉