[barry82]

Really? Is the author too young to remember that Google maps was the first company to not do maps horribly?

Consistency is one of the reasons why the maps are no longer horrible.

[metamemetics]

User interface is far more important. The majority of use cases were people looking for directions to places in non-satellite view.

Google maps was the first one where you could simply drag a fullscreen map around with your mouse and zoom with mouse wheel.

I suspect it wasn't until after this user interface enhancement that people even bothered exploring satellite views much.