Google Schools Apple on Maps

Google wants Apple, and the rest of us, to know just how expensive and hard it is to make good maps.

On Wednesday the search company gave a press conference with little news. It was timed just ahead of an expected announcement by Apple that it will swap Google Maps on its operating system for iPhones and iPads for its own service.

“I am very proud of Google Maps services,” said Brian McClendon, vice president for engineering at Google Maps. “We would like to get all services on all platforms.”

Google, which dominates online maps, has come under pressure in recent months as increased developer fees have raised interest in alternatives from Microsoft, Apple and open source map projects.

Seemingly in response, Google offered an exhaustive list of what it will take to match Google in mapping. The list totaled millions of dollars in capital expenditures. Google has been working on maps for eight years. Google owns airplanes to make precise three-dimensional urban maps. Google covers 187 countries, and 26 million miles have been driven to provide accurate information and city views. The familiar cameras on cars are now on bikes, boats and snowmobiles, and soon will be on backpacks. Google has mapped museums and airports. Some organizations use it to show where land mines are located. Amazonian tribes facing deforestation use it to tell their stories.

There were impressive new features on display as well, including offline use and better 3-D maps. Soon people with phones using Google’s Android operating system will be able to pinch bits of maps on the screen and zoom in and out of things like city plans when they are not connected to the Internet.

A 3-D service called Tour Guide, enabling flyover views of popular metropolitan locales, will be introduced shortly, and by the end of the year will map land inhabited by 300 million people. “We expect the innovation to speed up over the next three years,” Mr. McClendon said.

In other words: Hey, Apple, are you going to be able to do that?

Google executives also noted that their company had, over several years, moved from buying information from various cartographic sources to making its own. Apple, which seems to have entered mapping with a couple of acquisitions over the past few years, will almost certainly be depending on other people’s data.

Aside from arming reporters with ammo for critiquing Apple, Google may also be seeking to pressure Apple, through consumer demand, to offer Google Maps.

If it doesn’t succeed, Google may offer a free mapping application or a browser-based service that would work on Apple’s iOS or Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system. Even with Google’s resources, though, it would be hard to do that and maintain quality, Mr. McClendon said.