[moopark]

Slippy maps are great. The UX was a great idea, but it was almost entirely dependent on having the technology and infrastructure to implement them, including asynchronous map tiling client side.

I don't think that is in conflict with my original statement, and the remainder of the Maps API is truly bad. I regularly make the mistake of using the scroll wheel, get stuck trying to figure out how to show (or hide) street view, etc.

Regarding GMail -- it's a poor approximation of an existing, very basic desktop experience. There's not a lot of design innovation there, if you look beyond webmail.