A government funded utility that utilizes regional GIS and aerial mapping would go a long way. Google's got the upper hand on directions and traffic reporting though, so that would take more time to make effective. A lot of that is genuinely due to the number of users that exist on the platform though. I think if you tried to implement similar location data analysis for government infrastructure, people would be up in arms at the idea, despite being perfectly happy to provide the same data to Google.

It's unfortunate that Google is as prevalent a default service as they are, but it's hard to ignore how good a service they offer, and how long the development period has been to get them there.