[simula67]

Good news. These types of data intensive apps ( Google search, Google Maps etc ) are one of the greatest threats to the open web because they make it very painful to switch to an alternate provider. Keeping this type of data open ( along with open data interchange formats ) could improve competition in service providers

[sidr]

It's actually trivially easy to switch from Google search and maps, just type in a different URL or change a setting on your browser. It's only "hard" because the alternatives are just not as good. The fact the the alternatives have to work so hard to stay competitive might suggest that open data intensive apps just aren't as good of a model for delivering quality content. We've seen this play out before with the iOS and Mac OS X hatred before tech folks turned from hating MS to Apple to now, Google/FB.