Dear Google Maps
The front page for Google Maps does not need a map of North America on it by default. It takes annoyingly long to load, which must be done before the page will accept input (as far as my browser goes, anyway), and I will venture to guess that no one comes to Google Maps intending to browse North America for an interesting place to look at. If I'm at all typical, pretty much everyone comes with a street address on the clipboard, ready to paste into the search field.
The Google Maps front page should, instead, look almost exactly like the main Google page, with maps presented only after a particular address or route is called for.
Comments
They have this thing that lets you set a searched location as your default location. If you do that, Google Maps will start up centered on that location... until you clear your cookies or something. But I agree; default to a search interface, ala Google Search. It's what they do!
If you enter the address in the regular google search and hit i feel lucky, it will take you to google maps and the address you searched for. You can bypass the maps.google.com entry page entirely.
-Alex
Ah, that explains it. Cause I was gonna say: I only get the text-input box, no map of the US...
I suppose I should have known (or at least realized) that you could do a direct address search through the main Google interface. Good feature!
For the record, it turns out that the term-search/"I Feel Lucky" combination does not always result in a map. Oh well.