I have to agree with both Barrie and David here, the Google Directory was increasingly redundant in recent years with the increased quality of Google's search results. I think there is a market for directory sites on the internet but I think for a business such as Google, this move as Barrie quite rightly points out was very long overdue.

If I wanted to look in a directory, I would go directly to Open Directory (dmoz). However, I feel bound to say that, even as a long-standing ODP editor, I very rarely did that because a SE search is so much more productive. Given that Google has 'dropped' ODP, I think that could be one of the final nails in the coffin of a reasonable concept whose time is long since past.