OK. That's why I asked. Not going into too much detail... the Android environment tries to help out app developers. There are set variables that are available to all apps. So if you want to have a calendar inside your shopping list app that you're writing, instead of having to code an entire calendar, you can just borrow the native calendar data in Android.
The same thing is true to things such as GPS coordinates, time, phone state (on call or not), volume levels, etc. So, just because "google maps" is running and your GPS icon is on, doesn't mean that Maps is actually running, but could mean that something else is using location data on your phone. Do you use Google.com as your home page in any browser? I have had a problem where it tries to get my location when I go back to the homepage, but I exit out of the app before it can acquire that location and gets stuck. If you go back into the browser, in this case, and let it acquire you location, or tell it to refresh, then exit the app, it goes away.
Also, a restart every now and again can help this kind of thing. Are you running any other programs that may need your location to operate? Latitude? Facebook Check-In, etc.?