Apple buys up a map company, Google Maps in jeopardy.

Well the economic downturn has officially become an upturn for the folks at Placebase. It looks like Apple’s continuing its process of mimicking Google. Kind of makes you wonder if Google vs. Apple is the new Microsoft vs. Apple.

Things are about to get all Geo on us, which in turn opens up all kinds of speculation about functionality coming to the iPhone, or perhaps even, functionality leaving the iPhone (ahem *google maps* ahem). On the surface it seems like the pushpin technology is leaps and bounds better than Google maps’ abilities.

The clash of the titans is starting to become a huge reality, as Apple and Google continue to butt heads again and again about Google having apps on the iPhone, and surely this is going to be an issue in the future. Apple’s getting ready to toss out the typical “duplicates existing functionality” excuse again. Google’s lawyers better get ready. It’s only a matter of time.

The really funny thing about this whole Google-Apple battle is that it’s the users who are getting screwed here. It’s not gonna take long before Google decides to pull YouTube support for all Apple devices in retribution for their heavy handedness. Hopefully it doesn’t get to that point, but if Google Maps disappear one day, we might be stuck in the middle of the fight. Get ready for third party upload applications on your Mac.

Joshua is the Content Marketing Manager at BuySellAds. He’s also the founder of Macgasm.net. And since all that doesn’t quite give him enough content to wrangle, he’s also a technology journalist in his spare time, with bylines at PCWorld, Macworld and TechHive.