Personally, what I find mind-boggling is the inability of Google to capitalize on Map's potential. If improved, it could concurrence at least TripAdvisor and Y

Personally, what I find mind-boggling is the inability of Google to capitalize on Map's potential. If improved, it could concurrence at least TripAdvisor and Yelp easily (and maybe Booking too, if they were willing to invest in customer service - which I doubt). Maps has the potential to be integrated (or better integrated) everywhere in Google's digital estate (search, GMail, Android, even YouTube). Simarly, simplifying the creation, sharing, and most of all, discovery of user-made maps could boost it enormously. Instead, it languishes. The UX is incredibly frustrating. Just sharing a location on a map can be non-trivial. Making it more difficult to build on top of maps was an incredibly bone-headed move as well.