Google Apps on my Android always were always one of the worst.

Google Maps - resource hungry, always doing something in the background, slow .. replaced them with much better, unfortunately local, alternative

Google Play - two examples: doesn't prevent phone from losing network so I have to play with the phone in order to download updates; listing my applications always takes about half a minute.. even if I did the same task 5 seconds ago

Google+ - basically unusable, unbearably slow, doing stuff in background all the time, crashed whole system few times

The truth is I don't have the most modern phone, but it isn't the slowest either (it's single core 900MHz w/ 512MB ram). It's running on the latest available android for that device (the device was sold less then a year ago, it's from 2010). Can't imagine how those apps run on older/slower phones.

Side note: Another multi-billion dollar company that can't seem to produce working android application is facebook. That is the single worst application that I have ever used (some were worse (google+), but I can't really talk about "usage" with them). It's getting slowly better, but it's still a crap. Twitter on the other hand is great.

Not to be rude, but most apps on the Play Store are going to run slow with those specs, especially if it's running on a more current version of Android than it was designed for. My G2 used to be blazing fast when it came out two years ago. I wouldn't even dare attempt running anything on that thing now.

Personally, I've found Google's Apps to work the best and look the best...on modern devices.

I understand that general developer doesn't care about part of the users if it would require the extra mile of work. But Google?

Agreed. I use K9 instead of Gmail. Better in every single way.

What do you use instead of Maps?

I don't use Google+ or Facebook. Thank god for disabling applications. (I'm referring to the ones that are locked to your phone and cannot be uninstalled).

I use Mapy.cz by Seznam (Czech company that only recently lost its 1st position in search to Google (after Google spent billions on advertising)). I find their web maps[1] better than Google maps as well (again, Czech Republic only).

1. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cz.seznam.mapy

2. http://mapy.cz/

Maps doing stuff in background? That's the location service being used by another app, commonly weather apps.

As for G+/Talk, disable sync or sign out of Talk.

Talk works just fine for some reason :)

And is location service tied to application named "Maps"? If so, that might really be the case.. although I only have this problem after I use Maps, not when I use other apps that require location.

The location providers on Android are not tied to any one app, but are system level services that apps register with for updates. Location that takes GPS can take longer to acquire fixes and Google Maps will attempt to use the most accurate fix possible, so if the GPS acquisition is slow, maps will be slow.

I totally understand your points, though. I use an older device with roughly the same specs, and when I was using stock 2.3 it wasn't very fast.