In the same week Google Earth is (re)launched as a completely free version of Keyhole, Google adapts to the intense interest in Google Maps and publishes an API. Bloody excellent.
I can't be fun competing with that.
It is interesting how much easier it is for Google to launch all this stuff without a public backlash because there is absolutely no question of monopoly for search (nobody has one) and also because Google behaves so very well interop-wise (free and available API's for anyone to tinker with). Yahoo also gets it. Amazon also gets it. Microsoft only partially gets it and Apple, despite having an extremely hackable platform, doesn't get it at all in terms of communication and the data services Apple also offers.