Frankly, a perfectly justifiable reason to perform a redirect. I can't say with any certainty what things were like at the exact time of the block, but I just

Frankly, a perfectly justifiable reason to perform a redirect. I can't say with any certainty what things were like at the exact time of the block, but I just popped open Google Maps with a Windows Phone (which doesn't have most of the latest large updates, just some hotfixes from like 6+ months back) and pan, zoom, etc. all work just fine and is very smooth. And this is one of the earlier phones. On top of this, all they did was redirect back to google.com, without any message as to what was going on. (e.g.: your browser does not work well with Google Maps yet, you can do a local search from our main website for now) The whole thing just... smells kind of bad to me. Regardless of whatever statement they might have made. Isn't this sorted? IIRC, this was down to Microsoft not complying with terms of use wrt. the implementation of ads. I believe in the big kerfuffle that went on, Microsoft was basically saying "Work with us and we'll comply", but Google basically didn't give them any APIs or anything to work with in order to make a compliant app. (I think they even ended up finding some private APIs in order to make some stuff work) I think, in the end, the reason it got banned was down to some clause in their terms of use that required them to use web technology in their implementation, which would have horribly crippled the app, and was not particularly feasible to implement in any reasonable amount of time. Not because Microsoft refused to display ads. Google are not, and never were, a "white knight" - they're just a better-than-average-at-openness tech company. If those examples are the worth you can highlight, then the comparison to Microsoft—who, if you remember, actively tried to eliminate Linux!—is beyond preposterous. Unfortunately, I can't really give a good response to this. Part of what I might be able to say is private related to my job, and part of it is just a general feel for what the company is slowly turning into, rather than any specific enumerable list of things I can point to. There are things I can point to, such as how they handle Youtube and the content creators on it, or how they handle dealing with Microsoft, or customer support, the automated systems which hurt those that provide value for Google, etc., but I don't think any of it can live up to the level of "tried to kill Linux" that Microsoft was at a while ago. But I think that they might be starting to head in that direction, and that a lot of people who actually view them as a sort of "white knight" (see lots of comments on HN for examples of that when it comes to Google, or news, etc.) will gladly welcome that. I guess I did have a few things to say in response. Agree or disagree with me as you will, this is entirely my own opinion.