Not entirely sure, I'm less familiar with the decision-making processes in Geo. I suspect it's similar, where the goal of keeping things fresh and interesting made them take the product in a different direction, which naturally will piss off all the customers who started using it because they liked the old product direction. I don't personally like the new Google Maps either, but understand that a company's first and foremost goal is to go after new users, and making existing users happy is only important if they'll leave if you don't.

I really hate the new maps too and find it more difficult to do pretty much anything. Glad a designer got to make an exec happy by redesigning it into crap, though. At least someone benefitted.