[sjwright]

But think about that for a second.

Apple spends something like 1 billion dollars a year on Apple Maps. There is no strategic reason for them to do maps. They aren't making money from it. They are anonymising the statistics they gather. They chose to spend this insane amount of money doing something completely foreign to them just so their customers don't have to use Google Maps.

Let that sink in.

It's incredible.

As for the quality of Apple Maps—yes, it was rubbish when it first launched but today it is usually (depending on your city and your specific usages) within cooee of equally good. In fact I tend to find Apple Maps often superior for walking and public transport directions in an unfamiliar city.

[Phlarp]

Apple's motivation to grow Apple Maps is the same as Google's motivation to grow their maps product-- commoditize the complement.

They both spend lots of money on maps in the hope that users will use those maps on each corporations platform. The difference is Apple makes money selling the device and services, Google makes money selling your attention to advertisers.

The real driving force for Apple to spend that money was Google restricting features in their iOS app.

[sjwright]

Commoditising the complement is a compatible thesis to my aforementioned point.

Also, it was leaked somewhere that Google was willing to give iOS all the features as long as Apple would allow all the user tracking. I can't speak to how reliable that is, but it wouldn't surprise me.