[paganel]

In the “old”, initial days (circa 2005-2006) they weren’t bothered by this, I remember they released the GMaps public API back then as a result (among other factors) of some people reverse engineering the public-facing interface. If I’m not mistaken one of the first projects that was using the reverse-engineered version (before the API was made public) was the former Chicago Crime website, one of the first Django installations.

[mtmail]

The book 'Never Lost Again' (2018) tells the keyhole/Google Maps story line. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35820393-never-lost-agai... Actually I left with the impression nobody involved had a good plan what Google Maps should be after launch. API was an afterthought.