This reminds me of the bad old days when Google Maps didn't have an API yet and people manually de-minified the source and hacked their way into the hidden API.

This reminds me of the bad old days when Google Maps didn't have an API yet and people manually de-minified the source and hacked their way into the hidden API. The original mashups that were created as a result of this hacking resulted in the Google Maps API as it stands now. I've heard from Googlers that before the proliferation of these mashups there were no plans at Google to introduce a public Maps API.