How maps look like depend on a whole bunch of other factors like the projection they use etc. Thus simply overlaying the maps and say, hey, this is distorted, is simply unfounded. It's very likely that Google maps etc may be adopting different projection systems so the users can have smooth using experience zooming in and out, and panning across the global without feeling the earth is round.
I've been loving R since college and even wrote a love letter in the form of an R package for it. But Python just grabbed my heart these days after I learned to implement web things in Django. All the data magic are just a breeze.
And the even sadder thing is, even if "Google+ now opens to everyone", the search term of google+ has retreated to near the low level of post-launch. sigh ...
well the argument of number is tricky since nobody has the number except Google. But another product of google's own, Google Trends, do help to see the decline. See here: