Monday News Recap: Russian Search Engine Acquires Apple Maps API, iMessage Goes Down, and Apple’s Stock Prices Soar

Russian Search Giant Acquires Apple Maps API

Like a slowly deteriorating relationship, Apple is slowly severing its ties with Google’s mobile apps by building new relationships with other third-party app developers around the globe. Lately, Apple has particularly warmed up to Russia’s major search engine, Yandex, and the two companies are now working together to bring forth an even more major change: replacing Google as the default search engine in mobile Safari with Yandex on Russian iPhones.

iMessage Service Goes Down

Did you experience any iMessage outages this weekend? Apparently it’s been widespread. The Next Web reports that hundreds of disgruntled users have complained on Twitter that iMessage has not been sending messages. While Apple’s mentioned no problems so far, Next Web staffers have noticed some interruption of service on their own iPhones, and even I had trouble sending a text message this morning from my iPhone 4S, via Verizon Wireless.

Apple’s Stock Prices Shoot Through the Roof

Hot off the coat tails of 2 Million iPhone 5 pre-orders, Apple’s stock price broke the $700 barrier for the first time today in after-hours trading. MacRumors reports that Apple’s stock has risen a meteoric 65{813a954d5e225a1509f22204ece89c855080ce25555f20805f61bed63cbfde3b} in the last nine months, rising more than $270 a share. This is the biggest increase Apple has seen, and now the company is worth a whopping $650 billion, beating out Google and ExxonMobil to the punch.