When you link to Google Maps on the iPhone, it opens up the naive application to give you the full iPhone experience. Alastair James wanted to use the Google Maps JavaScript API on the iPhone, and wrote up his thoughts:

Before the newest version of mobile Safari, this would not have been possible. Fundamentally you cant drag the map! However, with the new version Apple introduced a javascript API for sensing single and double finger drag events.

So, I went about knocking up a very basic test version (try it on your iPhone). Is buggy, basic and sub-optimal, but proves it could work nicely. Try zooming with the double finger pinch action!

I also tried the new webkit CSS transforms to allow free zooming and rotation, however they are buggy and slow on the iphone! Oh well! Anyway, maybe we can have google maps lite on the iphone?