Note-jotting and mapapp firms VANISH into Apple's MAW Apple has slurped two companies in a bid to boost the fortunes of its maps app and note-taking services. According to the evergreen rumours site 9to5Mac, the fruity firm wolfed down mapping firm Broadmap and Evernote competitor Catch, which specialises in natty note scribbling. In the last quarterly earnings announcement, Tim …
Would Where 2's little web site attract any traffic if Google hadn't bought them out and called it Google Maps? Would Fingerworks' technology be in over a half billion devices if they hadn't been acquired by Apple?
When a big company buys a little company to gain access to their tech, there's always a risk that it "vanishes into the maw", but the reason Apple and Google buy companies is because they want to develop that technology or integrate it into their products in a way that would be very unlikely to happen otherwise.
It isn't as if they're the conspiracy theorist's modern version of big oil buying up carburetors that get 100 mpg to keep them out of the hands of the public.
Google would have me drive to Viterbo through no less than three small medieval villages, along the old medieval route. Said route includes multiple hairpin bends and roads that sometimes become too narrow for two small cars to pass each other, so you can imagine what it's like when HGVs try and do likewise.
Apple's maps, on the other hand, correctly sends you along the bypass built over 20 years ago to relieve said three villages. It even gets the names and numbers right, as well as showing the area in rather more detail than Google's photos do.
Mapping the Earth accurately is hard. Neither company gets it spot on all the time, but this weird internet meme that only Apple's Maps ever get it wrong suggests that either TomTom are deliberately selling Apple a dodgy database (which seems extremely unlikely), or the media are being ridiculously selective about their memories. Google's mapping data wasn't exactly stellar during its first few years either.
"Both Google and Apple just seem to buy up tech these days. Do they make anything themselves?"
Why the hell would you piss money away on reinventing the wheel when there's a perfectly good wheel over there with a "For Sale" sign stuck to it?
When did "Not Invented Here Syndrome" become a desirable business policy?
If one of those firms happen to make Robots, could it be Fanbois are worried that idriods are arming their new robots in preparation for a pre-emptive strike?
Maybe both apple and google are controlled by some sort of skynet like computer and use the rivalry as an excuse to build up their robotic forces.
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