Yes, it is a Google service with a public API. It would need to log into it (ie provide credentials).

I'm only interested in showing them on the map, not sending in your own position (already having the latitude daemon doing that - its map part sucks though), and be able to get a route to one of them (click on one and use that as some kind of temporary POI)

Not urgent, I'm not needing it in the near future, would have been nice here on Fosdem