It may not be rigorous, but I agree: kudos. I’ll bet there are a whole lot of JavaScripters out there wetting themselves.
as simple as possible, but no simpler
I also think it bears noting that Google is pulling out all the stops to build rich web apps, no matter how weirdly they have to hack the browser to make them go. And I strongly believe that this is a trend that is here to stay — XHTML Strict/CSS/etc be damned. At the end of the day, what really matters to users is compelling apps that let them get their work done quickly.
Imagine now if SVG [1], [2]was used! That would be heavenly. Will we ever see the day?
Update 2/10
- Google Maps’ JavaScript source. It’s obfuscated, so you’re going to have to run it through some kind of lint-like utility for JavaScript (Simon Willison suggests prettyprinter.de) as well as some variable renaming.
- map.search.ch’s JavaScript source. maps.search.ch
is the spiritual predecessor to Google Maps, having many of the same
features. Unlike the JavaScript for Google Maps, this isn’t obfuscated
— in fact, it’s pretty nicely laid out.
Aaron Fulkerson 
