It wasn't absurd at all. Hundreds of millions of iOS devices will soon be reporting mapping data to Apple. Their maps will improve quickly. Hundreds of millions of iOS devices no longer be reporting mapping data to Google. Their maps will suffer. Inevitably, they meet in the middle.
The previous Google app was great as a map, relatively useless for navigation. Without turn by turn....what was the point? They never did a thing to improve it.
I've actually been using an app called Waze on both Android and iPhone lately. It has some odd moments as well, but I find that a ton of people are using it and it is scary useful in ways that Google maps and iOS maps are not - shows the hows and whys of traffic jams and even very consistent locations of radar traps, etc.