[codybear]

It probably just uses the icon inside of the exe.
You need a resource explorer to open it up and view it/change it.
Or you can go in the registry to
HKLM\Security\Shell\StartInfo\Start

Then find what program you want.
like you said googlemaps, I have googlemaps.lnk
open that location up.
then you can edit the string inside there named Icon.
It will allow you to point it to the icon you want to use.
for example mine says "\Windows\Start_Icon_GoogleMaps.png"
Make sure to include image's extension (.png)
and not sure if it can be any other type of image,
but just to be safe, I would use png.

Hope that helps haha.