I hate this trend. Do people design soldering irons or cars to cater for newbies who didn't spend even 5 minutes trying to learn how it works? Programs like MS Office or Google Maps are tools. By dumbing them down, companies are making them less and less useful. And apparently nobody cares about power users (i.e. people who will actually use your tools) because there's more money in throwaway users.

Google, could you please make Google Maps Pro, with consistent interface and advanced functions available all the time? I'll be a paying customer.