Well, google started charging WAY too much, so you have folks with started projects that simply became untenable. And the principal of something for free/cheap becoming very expensive after you've built an infrastructure around something is shady at best.
So - my company uses Google maps as the foundation of one of the features of a couple of our products, and, originally, we had free licenses. But the day we started using them, we had a conversation where we wondered what Google was eventually going to charge us, and when they were going to charge us. As it turns out - our original guesses back in 2004, where just a shade lower than what we ended up paying in 2011. Our volume is lower than others, and we get a lot of value out of each map display - so the pricing (around $10,000/year) is just a cost of business. We certainly don't consider it too much for our needs.
On the flip side - if we weren't extracting much in the way of revenue per copy of software, and/or our volume was really high - obviously OSM would be very attractive, and we would be waving bye to Google Maps, and joining that community (and hopefully helping to improve the material by donating to up-and-coming cartographers if we weren't inclined to utilize our GIS skills).
To some degree, I think Google re-enforced a very, very valuable lesson - if something is being offered very free/cheap, and is one of the foundations of your product, and you don't have a license/contract (e.g. GPL/BSD) guaranteeing you that pricing - be aware that you are at the mercy of that third party and plan accordingly.
We see this on HN over, and over, and over again with companies like Apple that end up screwing businesses that rely on the Apple store/iOS - I wonder if PG has written an essay on that - building your house on other people's foundation.
