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Comment by dehrmann | Hacker News Reader

I'm not convinced Apple could make a viable search product to compete with Google. Their Maps app is OK, but not as good as Google's, and I can't imagine anyone other than the privacy conscious installing an Apple Maps app on their Android phone. It's possible Apple knows it has no interest in the search business, but Google doesn't know that, so they might as well squeeze a few extra dollars out of them.

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> Their Maps app is OK, but not as good as Google's

Except Apple Maps has definitely been improving and Google Maps doesn't seem to be substantially improving anymore. At the current apparent trajectory Maps will catch up quickly.

I would argue Apple Maps is already better in several important ways. It is only a matter of time before it no longer makes sense to use Google Maps.

> Google Maps doesn't seem to be substantially improving anymore.

Google Search is even going in the other direction. (Recent discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29392702)

I wouldn't bet against Apple if they were incentivized to compete in this space. Their whole shtick is using feats of engineering to dominate lazy competitors.

That's assuming apple maps will actually serve you reliable navigation one day. I'm tired of uturns, unprotected lefts, and not finding local restaurants that are on google and every single grubhub type service on the internet except apple maps seemingly.

> I'm tired of uturns, unprotected lefts

I get this with Google Maps and not Apple Maps so your anecdotal experience is at least questionable.

Maybe it depends on the city but apple maps is pretty worthless in LA for this, as well as not having a lot of businesses in their catalog for whatever reason. Looking up a local place that comes easily on google maps can bring up something halfway across the country in Apple maps. Waze was also notoriously bad at this, I about had it one day and just pulled over uninstalled the app when it asked me yet again to make an unprotected left. I shopped around for sure, but only google maps seems to avoid the unprotected moves as well as get all the local businesses. Even some food trucks are on google maps.

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