This price reduction looks like it is only for sites supported by advertising / unmonetised sites.

Any startup planning on charging for an app or service which incorporates any kind of map will still have to pay a minimum $10,000 a year license fee to use Google Maps, which is ridiculously high as a starting point.

What Googles mishandling of the charging changes has done is to heavily publicise the fact that the alternatives (mainly OSM) are now good enough for major companies to switch to without much hassle.