It seems hard to believe that offering the service via a desktop web app is any less secure - If it was, surely the same security concerns would apply to gmail,

It seems hard to believe that offering the service via a desktop web app is any less secure - If it was, surely the same security concerns would apply to gmail, google docs, etc? When I saw this reasoning my immediate assumption was that they made the decision first, then came up with this excuse in order to keep up appearances and conceal the _real_ reason, (which I would guess is something like "they're undertaking a project which involves making large changes to google maps in order to increase revenue, and the work needed to make desktop maps timeline compatible with these changes isn't deemed worthwhile since it doesn't have many users and doesn't directly create revenue").