My feeling, @WilfriedB , @tony_b , @PrasadVR , is that Google is trying to find a solution of the deletion of the answers.
Let me explain. I start from the principle that a user should be able to delete only one part of his contributions: photos and reviews. We cannot delete “edits” because once an edit is accepted it is possible to revert it. Answers were deleted by deleting the “web History”. This caused a lot of issues and a lot of Local Guides lost a lot of points because they decided to delete the History. Long time ago Google Maps promised a solution for this issue, and this is probably the reason of this change. It doesn’t mean that we have to delete them, but I hope this will avoid us to delete them inadvertently. I’m tagging @DeniGu for a confirmation