Apple is rumoured to be ditch­ing Google Maps in iOS 6 and this has Google a bit con­cerned, under­stand­ably. iOS 6 is likely to be announced and pos­si­bly released at WWDC 2012 next week.

So Google held a press con­fer­ence this week to announce their plans for maps. Which appar­ently went really well:

@jlgolson: That’s the worst pre­sen­ta­tion I’ve ever seen. How was that any­thing excit­ing at all? It was more the “his­tory” of maps than the future.

@stevekovach: What a waste of time.

@MattRosoff: Take­away: Google is ter­ri­fied of Apple Maps what­ever, and Apple hasn’t even announced any­thing yet.

MG Siegler:

What Google actu­ally unveiled today is their own vul­ner­a­bil­ity in the space. Beyond a few tiny leaks, no one knows what Apple’s map­ping prod­uct will be like. Google has by far and away the best map­ping prod­uct on the planet. But they still felt the need to hold this mean­ing­less press con­fer­ence today. That’s fight­ing down, not up. And it’s a big mis­take because it con­veys the oppo­site of what Google was try­ing to con­vey: con­cern, not confidence.

Assum­ing Apple does unveil a new iOS maps app, the one big follow-​​up ques­tion is what will hap­pen on the web? Apple doesn’t tra­di­tion­ally do a great job of web apps, although the iCloud​.com web apps for Mail, Con­tacts, Cal­en­dar, and Find my iPhone are done sur­pris­ingly well for Apple¹.

I think Apple will, at least ini­tially, sim­ply not care about the web side of map­ping. They’ll ditch Google Maps as the back­end for the native maps app in iOS and replace it with their own map­ping app/​technology. Most peo­ple assume the map­ping app on iOS is one built by Google but it’s actu­ally an Apple map, just using Google’s data/​mapping ser­vice. Kind of like how iPhoto for iOS ($4.99 in the App Store) uses their own map­ping tech­nol­ogy for GPS coor­di­nates of your pho­tos. iPhoto for iOS was a test of Apple’s map­ping tech.

I have no idea how many peo­ple use the native Maps app now on iOS as opposed to search­ing in Mobile Safari — but I know if I really want to find my way some­where, the native app is much eas­ier to use than brows­ing to Google Maps in Safari. So Apple takes over that expe­ri­ence and leaves the web brows­ing usage of map­ping tech­nol­ogy to Google — for now.

At some point in the future, Apple releases a Mac App using their tech­nol­ogy so that you can more eas­ily send direc­tions and GPS coor­di­nates between iOS and OS X.

Or maybe not? Maybe desktop/​laptop usage of map­ping tech­nol­ogy is on the decline and Apple just focuses on mak­ing the best pos­si­ble map­ping app for iOS. If the app is so good on my iPhone, I’ll be much more inclined to pick that up if I need to find my way — even if I’m sit­ting in front of a 24″ iMac.

What­ever hap­pens, it’d be inter­est­ing to be a fly on the wall of Google and Apple’s map­ping teams as it all plays out over the next cou­ple of weeks.