It wouldn't hurt people too much, but it could certainly deter some people from purchasing Iphones and Windows phones. 

What moron would try to use web based Google maps on a Windows Phone device?
The default maps client works wonderfully and if you have a Nokia device you have access to Nokia Maps and Nokia Drive, both of which are excellent and don't require data to work. Also there is gMaps pro 3rd party app which uses Google maps and works great as well as countless other 3rd party GPS and map services.

Bing maps already exists on windows phone works wonderfully. Also Microsoft has a Youtube app ready for Windows Phone but Google is not giving them access to Youtube API's which their android devices get.

Luckily there is Metrotube which is an excellent 4rd party Youtube app for Windows Phone (as good as anything on Android or iOS). The only bad thing about it is that they have to patch the app every 2 weeks because Google keeps changing the video codec security on Youtube in order to screw up the 3rd party apps such as this.

Microsoft has complained very vocally about this, so there has to be a business case for Microsoft wanting google to fully allow the maps.  That negates this statement about morons or whatever you're trying to say to us.

No they haven't complained about this maps thing at all.

Microsoft complained about the fact Google isn't giving them access to Youtube API's which will let them publish their own Youtube app. Media reported this maps outage few days abot and everyone is making such a big deal about it. It's been like this for ages for WP users...

They steal your puppy or something?

Well at least you're not paranoid and have a healthy perspective of corprate business practices. But hey, you can always blindly put your trust in MS, because they are different, after all, and they have gone through all that trouble to generalize and marginalize all of your wants and needs. Plus, they've got those hip, cool ads for their hip, cool products. 

Hooray, for the modern consumer and their ability to apply unbiased critical thinking.

Moderated,

-Mr Khan

Google would never steal a puppy...they would find it and return it for free however the new puppy would have AdSense and Adwords running in the background without your knowledge.

As if msft doesn't track what users do, either.  Msft can track whatever it wants since it owns the windows platform, and they do it bc this gives them more $$$$

MS crying mama: priceless.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/5/3840620/google-bringing-maps-back-to-windows-phone

Google backpedaled REAL quickly on this one. Their initial excuse was that the maps were optimized for Webkit. But simply changing the user agent string made the maps work flawlessly again on WP proving their excuse was nothing but an evil lie. They got caught with their pants down and had no choice but to backtrack.