What may have happened is the Maps and Google Maps icons may have gotten stacked on top of one another. I saw that happen once in an earlier iOS releases. Since Maps is a built in iOS app it cannot be deleted so it has to be there — somewhere.

  1. Try this,
    1. Open App Store on your iPad and search for Google Maps.
    2. If you have Google Maps installed instead of offering to Download or Buy it will say Open. If it does then you do have Google Maps installed on your iPad.
    3. In that case I can offer no explanation of how Google Maps got installed but it did and unlike Maps it can be deleted.
  2. Alternatively assuming you have Siri turned on and you have a WiFi internet connection or a telco data connection,
    1. press and hold the Pause button (the round button at the bottom of the screen in portrait mode) until a line with a microphone appears
    2. then speak the following, "open google maps",
    3. repeat except this time say. "open maps".
    4. At that point there may be two different apps open.
    5. Double tap the pause button and you will see all the open apps and you should be able to see the difference between the two map applications.
  3. Assuming both apps are installed and the icons are stacked as I surmised then a full reboot as I suggested previously should unstack them.
  4. Otherwise you may have to go to Settings > General > Reset (at the very bottom of the list) > Reset All Settings. Yes you will have to manually reset everything after that but hopefully that will clear the issue.

If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein