ComputerWorld's Seth Weintraub has deduced from some Tweets and a LinkedIn profile that, Apple has 'quietly' taken over a Google rival - the map-tech maker PlaceBase, along with its worldwide maps and API technology PushPin - and has hired its founder, Jaron Waldman.

The first indication of the acquisition, which came through two months back, was a July tweet by Fred Lalonde, the founder of Openspaces. org, a firm that used PlaceBase's software. The tweet read: "Apple bought PlaceBase - all hush hush. PushPin site taken offline." Incidentally, both placebase. com and pushpin. com have been taken down!

The news was further substantiated when Waldman's LinkedIn page showed PlaceBase under his 'past' experience category, listing his present occupation as a member of Apple's "GEO Team."

Apple's acquisition of a set of maps and mapping technologies, even when it has Google as its mapping partner, has either resulted from its growing interest in location-based technologies or because of its apprehensions about the future of its partnership with Google.

Whatever the reason, the takeover of PlaceBase is a significant move for Apple. In May last year, a GigaOM report said that PlaceBase is a potential Google competitor as it offers "customizations and tons of features that integrated private and public data sets in many diverse ways"; and its "easy-to-use" API, PushPin, offers the ability to layer third-party data sets.