personally, i question the argument of "location stuff doesn't work because its in beta" as if the feature isn't functional yet. the hold up has to be licensing, and is likely related to their tense relationship with google and potential movement away from their mapping service.
much like at&t they had a contract in place in the US, apple probably has a similar agreement for google maps, but the terms for other regions might have been less stringent and now google is using whatever loopholes they can since their relationship has soured.
its unfortunate and ultimately pretty petty, since they must really be mincing words to deem siri searches out of scope, when you can open google maps and do a voice dictated search, and external apps like mail and notes can even parse address data from generic input, generating direct links to google maps.