Summarizing a bit...

Thus far the original concept that I had visualized and what I have been able to produce have not matched as closely as I had hoped. I feel that Google still has a long way to go before it can provide some of the functionality that would seem somewhat intuitive. In comparing the Google Maps product to an ESRI Geodatabase, I feel that for personal use the Google suite could far excel above the features that ESRI can offer. That's not to say that Google Maps is as powerful, but Google has an edge in offering features that people are likely to find useful.

I found it much easier to create routes (through digitizing) in the Google Maps application than what I have experienced in the past with ESRI products. I liked the way that my converted shapefiles snapped right into the Google look and feel and I felt that my map created through Google was more portable and offered a simple graphic appeal that I could relate to.

On the downside. I spent countless hours looking for simple ways to integrate dynamic RSS style feeds into my Google Maps and was unable to come up with any that worked well enough to write home about. The idea is definitely there and perhaps as Web 2.0 integration continues to develop the functionality will follow.

I am determined to continue work on the project if for nothing else than to document what products are out that they can be combined spatially and how they could possibly enhance productivity. Call me sacreligious, but the concepts that drive Google Maps and some of the like products I have discussed bring a low-level of data combination and containerization similar to that of the geodatabase. Further these products do it in such a way that the average person is likely to want to use the service.

The ability to collaborate and share data is also an extremely important selling point of the Google Maps interface. I also like that you can import existing data into your map through a relatively easy process (though I had several instances where this didn't work as intended).

My though process now is that while I like the interface that Google My Maps provides, it might be necessary to move the project in the Google Maps API so that more tools and a wider array of options is available to make the idea feasible.