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Today during a keynote interview at AllThingsD’s D9, Google Executive Chairman (and former longtime CEO) [Eric Schmidt] made a key announcement: Google has recently renewed its partnership with Apple over mapping and search. In other words, don’t look for a new version of Maps on iOS at next month’s WWDC.
See also: Google Maps: Five reasons that Apple, others shouldn’t even try to compete - ZDnet
"Google: Mobile map search surging past desktop use" It's heading that way and will likely occur this summer per Marissa Meyer at Google speaking at TechCrunch's event last week. Surprising? Significant? Hard to say.
Maps+ adds tracking and location-based alarms to Google Maps
- TUAW
I'm not sure which I like less the name of the new local sharing startup OhSoWe, or the name it gives to your neighborhood, “Neighborstead.” The solution, from the founder of OpenTable, the restaurant reservation tool, aims to help locals share tools, services, etc. But, forget all that fakery on Google Maps, your address must be verified to play - via a credit card or a postcard.
- Mashable
NTT DoCoMo Inc has partnered with US social networking service Twitter Inc to jointly develop a location based alert service for smartphone users based on tweets, according to the report in the Nikkei business daily.
The research, from comScore (NSDQ: SCOR), found that in the U.S. in March, 16.7 million people used check-in services on their mobile devices. But that’s not actually a very big number: it works out to only 7.1 percent of all mobile users.
Samsung and SCVNGR are hosting a citywide treasure hunt in Kansas City where the winning team can take home $20,000.
But wait, there are more privacy hearing scheduled! This one with the Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Insurance Subcommittee.
A Senate Commerce subcommittee has scheduled a 10am hearing on mobile privacy for May 19, titled "Consumer Privacy and Protection in the Mobile Marketplace."
Among those invited to testify are Bret Taylor, chief technology officer at Facebook, Catherine Novelli, vice president of worldwide government affairs at Apple, and Alan Davidson, director of public policy at Google.
There's no word yet on who has accepted this invitation.
- PC Mag
Greg Sterling reports, but did not get official confirmation from either organization, Nokia tech will power the Bing Maps infrastructure. There have been many rumors regarding NAVTEQ in recent weeks from folks outside the industry, but Greg's on the inside, so I think this is worth sharing.
However my lunch companion argued unequivocally that Nokia Maps would effectively replace almost everything that Microsoft had developed over the past several years in terms of the Bing Maps infrastructure. This was shocking because Microsoft has invested hundreds of millions of dollars (if not billions) in creating a viable competitor to Google Maps. Most recently the company has been promoting its roll out of new hi-resolution aerial imagery on a global basis.
I said I couldn’t believe Microsoft would agree to swap in Navteq for the guts of its own system. Yet my lunch guest argued that Microsoft’s role would mostly center on the Bing Maps UI — ironically not unlike Yahoo’s relationship to Microsoft search results — everything else would be powered by Nokia.
And there was another very interesting remark. He asserted that Google’s unwillingness to agree to a co-mingling of Google Maps and Nokia Maps or substitution of Nokia Maps on the back end was one of the sticking points that prevented Nokia and Google from coming to terms.
Search Engine Land via @atanas
The gory details of how Nokia's mapping portfolio would work in the new Microsoft/Nokia deal announced earlier this year was not completely clear (APB coverage).
