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iPhoto maps may be a preview of Apple’s own mapping service

Seth Weintraub | Mar 7 2012 - 3:20 pm PT

It has become clear that Apple’s new iPhoto App is pulling mapping tiles from Apple’s own mapping services. Take this tile for instance. While they aren’t particularly good looking, Apple is no longer using third party mapping services like Google’s which iPhoto has used in the past and Apple has generally relied on for its mapping information across all of its applications, both Mac and iOS.

As Apple and Google continue to distance themselves from each other, Apple is clearly moving to bring its mapping needs in-house.

In fact, we’ve heard from a source within Google that Apple has NOT re-upped their mapping contract for 2013 and their current mapping contract ends toward the end of this year. That means Apple could be moving all of its mapping data to this new format by the end of the year.

Apple last renewed its Google Maps contract in May of 2011.

Apple has acquired three different mapping startups including Placebase, C3 and Poly9 from which it is likely building its mapping services. If you’ve seen what C3 can do, (videos below) you know that the above tile fits into the “you ain’t seen nothing yet” category.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Q5lM_KefDkg]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CNemPTHOKWg]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mlelVaxctI0]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CNemPTHOKWg]

Perhaps related, at about 10 seconds in on the iPad video, two people are using a navigation app with similar looking tiles (or it could be a navigation app I am not familiar with).