Google maps didn't happen because of Google programmers understanding of Ajax. Plenty of questionable stuff has and will be done with Ajax ...usually because people confuse tools with what Google does understand.
What google understands is user interaction design -- specifically how users search. That is not not to say Google didn't put the available tools to good use. All ajax does is provide one way of reducing reloads, that does not guarantee a good user experience - as a lot of Flash developers have learned.
The reason
Flash is 99% Bad is in large part confusing the designer experience with the user experience. ...That and the unfortunate tendency to confuse religion with technology.
Finally, web 1.0 was a horrible kludge. Berners Lee as much as admitted, if he had known anyone was going to use the thing, he'd have built WWW different. Making it the least little bit less awful is not good experience design, it's more like not hitting your foot with a hammer. And not hitting your foot with a hammer does not in any way, shape or form make you a good carpenter.
Just like using Ajax does not confer instant User Experience Designer status upon the developer. Confusing Ajax use with UX is like every Microsoft Word user calling themselves novelists or playwrites or poets. ...even the ones who will never write a book, play or poem.
The value of reducing reloads is totally nullified when what loads shouldn't have loaded in the first place. What's worse is if the developer thinks everything they turn out must be good experience design
just because they use Ajax.
Related:
In a companion piece to Flash 99% Bad, Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for December 2005:
Why Ajax Sucks (Most of the Time).
For the record, I disagree. The tools are not the problem, they're tools. The problem is the mindset where the tools isolate the developers from users, all the while proclaiming the great user experience they're creating
without doing proper user testing. Again, no user experience without users.