Quo vadis Map-based Search?

Maps and web search seem like a match made in heaven. Since at least 2005, many increasingly sophisticated digital maps have been deployed on a wide range of web portals, whether for real estate search, POI recommendations, neighborhood safety, or tourism. Interestingly, this trend may be coming to an end or even reverse itself, with maps being either demoted or disappearing altogether. Several potential reasons exist for this, including the rise of contextual information, the size of mobile displays, commercial interests, and privacy concerns. While it is difficult to identify the drivers on a per-portal basis, documenting and categorizing this trend, e.g., to tell apart legal reasons from commercial interests, is important to better understand the future of web-scale spatial information visualization.