When Google Maps launched in 2005 I was doing business with about seventy-five commercial developers who were using a Web mapping API product that simplified their work. It eliminated heavy lifting geodata management headaches, and gave them an easy way to geocode addresses, post-encode lat/longs, render maps, run nearest neighbor searches, and calculate routes - simple (now given) spatial processing primitives needed for any location-based application.

Twelve months after Google launched their API, the list of seventy-five partners shrunk to about twenty. The predicament was why pay for a service that they could get for free, and that was a hundred times faster and more attractive? Cheaper-better-faster always wins over expensive-mediocre-slow. The loss was very disruptive to me professionally and personally, and I subsequently went into Geoexile in favor of more broadened Mobile areas with Location & Geo on the periphery, rather than at the center of my work. I second guessed the decision a hundred times in my head, and have naturally remained curious how the situation has evolved and how it's perceived by hardcore Geo insiders.

Today I had morning coffee with a Geo Veteran to catch up on things. Here's what I found out...

Desktop Mapping is still used to make data and run analyses. It is still the domain of the skilled, educated Geo Pro. Nothing changed here...
Businesses question the value of a pay-for SaaS that Google offers for nearly free. All too familiar and brings back painful memories.
Some have discovered Site Selection Location Analysis isn't actually that big of a market. They are looking to exit, so expect more M&A consolidation. Uh, yep. Check.
GIS software (built by GIS experts) view their offer as something added to a larger BI, IT, DB stack, not a system unto itself. Again, nothing changed here, but this perspective changes depending who you talk to...
Geo Solutions Pros talk about Google everyday. Ugh, how exhausting...

All in all, not much has changed in GIS since 2005, yet so much of everything else around it has. That in and of itself is meaningful, and the key learning for me is what I already knew.