Simple answer: Google Maps suddenly costs a lot of dough.
More complex answer: Companies that need mapping services don't want to rely on Google if they are a competitor.
Say you're Foursquare. Would you rather rely on Google, a company that's investing heavily in social networking, or someone like Navteq or OpenStreetMap, organizations with a laser sharp focus on mapping services?
Foursquare went with OpenStreetMap though, and claim "while the new Google Maps API pricing was the reason we initially started looking into other solutions, we ultimately ended up switching because, after all our research and testing, OpenStreetMap and MapBox was simply the best fit for us."
They could be lying to cover a penny-pinching move, but I think they're telling the truth simply because Foursquare doesn't need particularly good geodata. It only needs for locations you visit to be fairly recognizable and locatable, it doesn't need to know that you can't do a u-turn or go that way up a one-way street or the exact location of a point to less than 1m accuracy. The only businesses it cares about it wants in its own dataset, not the map providers. Same story for Apple and its photo display or (going way back now) Yahoo/Flickr using OSM for geolocating photos in Iraq and China, Afghanistan etc. despite Yahoo having their own map team:
This process has been going on for a while now, it's the traditional story of the open alternative eating the market from the bottom-upwards and accelerating as it gets wider use and improves in quality in a virtuous circle.
Quite right. I knew Foursquare went with OSM, I was just putting a hypothetical out there as a thought exercise. But I did change my post to be a bit more accurate.
Also, you make a great point about the lower level of fidelity Foursquare, iPhoto and Flickr need. Higher map accuracy wouldn't be worth the cost in those use cases.
It seems Chris Anderson the author of Free was right. Free is a fundamental principle of the Internet because of its super efficient way to distribute information. If you try to mess with that too much, even something as huge as Google Maps could start losing market share if there's a good enough free/cheaper alternative instead.
More complex answer: Companies that need mapping services don't want to rely on Google if they are a competitor.
Say you're Foursquare. Would you rather rely on Google, a company that's investing heavily in social networking, or someone like Navteq or OpenStreetMap, organizations with a laser sharp focus on mapping services?