Google Maps originally used mapping data from a Dutch company called Tele Atlas (not Telenav, which is a different company). Tele Atlas is a subsidiary of TomTom. Mapquest was also heavily built on Tele Atlas data, as was the Microsoft mapping engine used by Bing and its predecessor MSN Maps.
The mapping data was so bad that Google bailed on their five year contract less than 18 months after their last renewal, instead using a combination of their own mapping data and data from Navteq and Telenav. Mapquest followed suit a year later, abandoning them for Navteq, and Microsoft dumped them in 2009. All cited the same thing...inaccurate mapping data.
It's wierd that Apple chose Tele Atlas as their mapping data source, as they have a reputation of having one of the worst mapping datasets for North America. Nearly anyone with a Tom Tom can tell you a horror story about being turned the wrong way down a one way road, or being directed into a parking lot that the software thought was a street, or being directed to drive their car down a walking path or unpaved road...or, in my case, being told that I had "reached my destination" as I was in the middle lane of an 8 lane freeway (my destination was in a business park alongside the freeway that could only be accessed by taking the PREVIOUS exit and following a frontage road). I trashed my TomTom in exchange for Google Maps specifically because Google was more accurate.
Basing the new iOS map application on TomTom is going to come back to bite Apple in the ass. The quality will be far below what Apple users have come to expect.
I mean, the data is so bad that even Microsoft wouldn't use it anymore. That's gotta say SOMETHING!
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