Think of it this way. The more Google knows about its users, the better-positioned they are to make more money off of them. If they know a person travels to a certain part of the city/state/country/world they can use that information to serve more context-appropriate ads to that person elsewhere in the Google eco-system. There's tremendous value in location - I don't see them giving that up.
I would be very surprised if the Google (search) website could share information like location with a hypothetical Google Maps app. And even if it could, I would expect Apple to shut down that avenue eventually.
Every Google iOS app has encouraged users to login to their Google account. I'd surprise me if this isn't the case with the maps app as well, and there's a convincing reason to encourage people to do so - giving them the ability to send directions to your phone from desktops and other devices. While it doesn't mean everyone will do this, they could still use anonymous location information to direct users to businesses in whatever context the user is most-applicable to the user (i.e. if they're shopping in a mall, or something like that).
