[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.