I never used Google Maps Engine myself, so I'm not really familiar with it. But it looks like Google was trying to consolidate and improve its paid maps offerin

I never used Google Maps Engine myself, so I'm not really familiar with it. But it looks like Google was trying to consolidate and improve its paid maps offerings, not discontinue them: http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2015/01/google-maps-engine-deprecated.html http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2015/01/google-maps-... The move should be seen as Google transitioning customers to already existing alternative products, especially Google My Maps (formerly Maps Engine Lite) which has come of age and now has most of the important features of Google Maps Engine A better example would be if Google were to discontinue its paid Google Maps API?