The recent upgrade to the Local Business Center has appeared in Australia and Canada as well as the US. It still is not visible in Europe. 

There were several changes that I noted on Friday that seem to be spam prevention mechanisms. One I missed though and of more import is that the bulk upload option is missing in action. As Joan van Hilten from Canada noted: 
 

Hi – this certainly has a huge impact on doing mass uploads. It’s going to be a mass headache. I was trying to do a bulk upload and kept hitting this single entry snag. I really thought I had lost the plot ! I was singing my ” I hate Google Song” ( it keeps me from wanting to send a 4 letter feed back to Google)

Does anyone have any idea if they will be restoring the bulk upload ability? Do they honestly think a CMR or any company with mulitple locations will be doing individual entry?

I think I’m going to be very busy for a very long time.

The work around according Martijn Beijk is to “change the &gl parameter and/or domain to a european one, you can keep the hl in your prefered language“.

That kludge apparently is working but raises the bigger question, along with the tightening up of the PIN requirements, of how Google will handle legitimate, mid and large volume users of the LBC.