Philipp Lenssen at Google Blogoscoped (thanks to Barry Schwartz) points out two new Google features that will have some impact on the future of Google Maps.
The first is Google My Reviews whereby a logged in Google user can find all of his or her reviews made on Google properties. Given the role that reviews currently play in Google Maps this will (at some point) will obviously affect local ranking.
The other is that Google Maps now supports Multiple Destinations. This has been something that Yahoo has offered for a while but any map push out will increase the direct use of Google Maps and will at some point move Google Maps into a true destination with more than 1% visitation.