OK, that was fabulously helpful. I've got the admin pages doing useful things using google layers with polygons and points on a couple records.
I'm a lot more familiar with the google maps api so can someone summarize the advantages to picking one over the other? First to come to mind is that people are more familiar with google maps UI widgets, the info window (balloon info thingy - is there an equivalent here?) and street view magical goodness.
Biggest advantage of OL seems to be I can pull from more data sources - yahoo and such and integrate them together.
-Todd Blanchard