Yesterday the Google maps app kept stopping after a short time, It has worked great up until now so I'm wondering if there was an update that could be the problem.
On the Play Store, there's an indication of the date of an app's most recent update. I see Maps 7.4.0 (the version that's on my phone) updated Nov 8, 2013. Of course, if you didn't actually download the update until yesterday that would be when new behavior would have begun. But if you're auto-updating, this version should go back to Nov 8.