Uber has had a lot of trouble with routing their drivers using directions from Apple Maps. (E.g. in SF, Apple Maps commonly recommends making [either illegal or dangerous] left turns off of Market Street). Sounds like this acquisition focused on engineers who process street-view-like image/sensor data, which Uber could probably collect much more quickly than Microsoft. It makes sense that they'd want to have engineers who were good at gardening the data (tho not necessarily doing robotics/CV-oriented research on it). This purchase has some rather realistic near-term wins.
Illegal left turns across Market Street? That's not so bad. If I'm heading home from south Brooklyn then Uber tells my driver to make a right turn into a "do not enter / buses only" area followed by a left turn that takes you the wrong way on a one way street.
(Someone with too much time on their hands can probably figure out my address from that description. Or my Instagram feed.)
If the Uber driver is using an Android phone the Uber app can launch the native Google Maps navigation. For the short term it wouldn't take much other than providing or even requiring Android devices for the driver
