Ever since Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, was elected to Apple’s board of directors back in late August, speculation about possible Apple-Google collaborations started. Unfortunately, so far there has been no such collaboration to speak of, and none of the companies have offered any information about their plans, but it looks like at least one cat is out of the bag.

It looks like the two companies are working together to bring geotagging to iPhoto. This is the technology that allows sites like Flickr and a whole slew of Google Maps API-based sites to mark on a map the location where something took place. In this case, it would be the location where a photo was taken.

While this has yet to be announced by either Google or Apple, a Mactelchat forum user which goes by the name of ‘javester’ has been investigating the iPhoto code and has come across evidence of this. In the Localizable.strings file inside the iPhoto app bundle, we find several intriguing keys, including one called GPSMapURL which is preset to “http://maps.google.com/maps?q=%f+%f” javester posted. The presence of this code in iPhoto that links it to Google Maps is not the only thing found.
A hidden button labeled ‘Show’ was also discovered and after some tinkering they got it working, and the video posted of it clearly shows the button accessing Google Maps and displaying a map with the location where the photo was taken.

The video can be found here.