Regarding the alternatives suggested in the article:

* Bing's maps are more cartoonish, and its satellite views are usually much older than Google's.

* Nokia ditto, and why use it unless you have a Windows Phone where it comes pre-loaded?

* Open Street Maps is really pretty good, but many commercial applications of Google Maps can't be converted due to the Open Source licensing diddles.

* Yahoo Maps kinda sucks, and always has.

Interesting that their list left off Mapquest - they're still around, and they still offer an API that can be used to build applications.

If Google's New Maps break old application code (which seems likely - Google really isn't into backward compatibility), we're going to lose things like the Caltrans Quickmaps that pretty nicely integrate maps, traffic flow information (which Google does have), CHP incidents, road cloasures, and similar stuff. While you can get that in Google, it's not clear how in many cases, nor is the source of the data. There might be a window here for Mapquest to get more business if they keep their API available.