I think this will be more helpful, although the static picture could be confusing to someone who is used to GMaps
... and this now means Google dosn't send you to their competitors like they did before

I am not sure why they are going for the static picture. This is particularly confusing since in the old Google Local service they used to have small very similar looking maps that were draggable.

Presumably Google is generating these images on the fly... yikes.

They still do, for most results.

I wonder if there is a onebox restriction in the current Google architecture that you can't use external JavaScripts or iframes? That would conflict with Google Maps.

I have been seeing this for at least a month, if not more.

Maybe they're aiming for more visibility for Google Maps or Local.