Apple acquires local business data startup Locationary
Apple may not have said much about the issues with iOS’s Maps at last month’s Worldwide Developers Conference, but the company is clearly still working on improving the service. Case in point: its recent acquisition of Toronto-based Locationary, which the company confirmed to AllThingsD on Friday. Both the startup’s team and the technology are reportedly part of the deal.
Locationary is a startup that’s focused on improving data about local businsesses. It pulls location information from a variety of sources, then aggregates and reconciles it, ensuring that the data provided to users is complete and up-to-date. That way, you don’t drive an hour out of your way to hit that great restaurant that actually closed six months ago.
An infographic from Locationary explaining their system.
That’s of particular importance to Apple, whose mapping service continues to suffer from incomplete or inaccurate local data. (As an anecdotal point, this week I spent fifteen minutes wandering around a nearby town trying to find a doctor’s office that was most assuredly not where Apple Maps claimed it was.)
Interestingly, Locationary CEO and founder Grant Ritchie penned a piece at TechCrunch last fall, detailing “5 Big Map App Issues Apple Must Solve.” The article focused on the difficulty of handling point-of-interest information, including the challenges and complications that arise from non-standard information, merging data sources, and aggregating local data—all issues that Locationary purports to solve. It’s certainly not outside of the realm of possibility that this article came to the attention of folks in Cupertino.
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