Is Google Maps off the Map?

Google Maps will no longer show real estate listings! The following are some excerpts from it's blog announcing the end of it's real estate presence in Maps. According to an announcement by Google about Google Maps:

In part due to low usage, the proliferation of excellent property-search tools on real estate websites, and the infrastructure challenge posed by the impending retirement of the Google Base API (used by listing providers to submit listings), we’ve decided to discontinue the real estate feature within Google Maps on February 10, 2011.

This move is particularly surprising since Google seemed intent on increasing it's presence in the real estate market. Just last year they were seriously considering purchasing online real estate search engine Trulia. However, they stated they aren't necessarily giving up on real estate:

Yet we recognize that there might be better, more effective ways to help people find local real estate information than the current feature makes possible. We’ll continue to explore this area, but in the meantime, Google offers other options to home-seekers: you can still access other information in Maps such as local businesses, directions and transit times, as well as aerial and Street View imagery to explore where you might want to move, and also use Google search results to find helpful real estate information and websites. http://ping.fm/HMrEL

Google, however, says the feature, which let people find available homes and rentals in Google Maps and filter results by square footage and price, saw “low usage.” It also cites the existence of “excellent property-search tools on real estate websites” as driving the decision to retire Google Maps.

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