Google Maps just fucking SUCKS now

[Brandon]

Japan's changes are MUCH more subtle than those of South Korea (the latter is about as subtle as being hit over the head with a sledgehammer).  Main differences between Japan and most of the rest of the world is the lack of borders on the freeway symbology, the ramps change colors to match the freeways at sufficiently close zoom levels, and traffic lights are shown.  Interchanges and toll gates are also marked with names at much further out than exit numbers are shown elsewhere.  Transit lines are also shown (albeit usually in black and white) at all times, not just when the transit layer is turned on (which simply turns them to color).

Japan's map symbology is very interesting, and I've never quite understood why their rendering is so unique. It's definitely nice to see street widths closer to reality, colors that don't overlap as much, etc.

Google bought out a Japanese firm and superimposed their existing maps since they were much more comprehensive. This firm managed to get the right formula for displaying complex underground maps (a necessity with their subway-level malls), which regular Google Maps still struggles to support.

They need to borrow that for the multi-level street system of downtown Chicago.  It's a crapshoot as to whether one lands on Upper, Middle, or Lower Wacker Drive with the street view thingy.

[stevashe]

Does anyone know why in China the road markers are consistently hundreds of feet off from the actual road? Is this done on purpose?

China requires it to be that way by law.

If you go to google.cn then the satellite imagery shown will match up properly with the map data, though this is just the satellite being moved to match up with the map data that's off, again because of said law, so the coordinates are still incorrect.

[TheGrassGuy]

They need to borrow that for the multi-level street system of downtown Chicago.  It's a crapshoot as to whether one lands on Upper, Middle, or Lower Wacker Drive with the street view thingy.

Too true

[cpzilliacus]

Washington Post: What happens when Google Maps gets it wrong

Two and a half years ago, my dad and his wife took an Uber from the airport to my house in Washington, D.C., as they've done many times before. Only this time, it took them to the wrong place: an empty lot by a cemetery, two miles from my house. My dad told the Uber driver it was not my house, but the driver didn't believe him. His app had led him here, so it must be right!

They all sat there for a few minutes, staring at the driver's phone, paralyzed by the startling gap that had opened between the app and reality.

This is how we discovered that Google Maps had two locations listed for our home. One was right, one was wrong. This seemed like a pretty minor problem in the scheme of things, and it was. For a while, I even thought it was kind of wonderful. We could be anonymous! Even Google didn't know where we lived!

But over time, as Google Maps got embedded in more and more apps, the problem worsened. Google Maps is used by Uber, Instacart, Lyft, Door Dash and even something called the Zombie Outbreak Simulator.

The second-most-popular maps app in the United States is Waze. Guess who owns Waze? Google Maps again! Soon Waze had our address wrong, too. Eventually, almost everyone who tried to find our house was directed to the wrong place.

[CtrlAltDel]

So, the latest Street View on I-290 in the Chicago area near where I grew up is this:



And if you go there, it's pretty messed up.

This is bad enough, but for whatever reason, they've taken away access to earlier Street Views, so there's no way to see the road. Worse, I've noticed this elsewhere, most notably the newer sections of I-69 in Indiana north of Bloomington.

This is unfortunate, since looking at the older images, even if they had a lower resolution, often showed unique details as well as the change in the road over time.

[jakeroot]

This is bad enough, but for whatever reason, they've taken away access to earlier Street Views, so there's no way to see the road. Worse, I've noticed this elsewhere, most notably the newer sections of I-69 in Indiana north of Bloomington.

This is unfortunate, since looking at the older images, even if they had a lower resolution, often showed unique details as well as the change in the road over time.

The access to older imagery seems to disappear if the Street View path doesn't perfectly align with older imagery. Since this imagery is all screwed up, the path got screwed up so GMaps thinks it new, without any older imagery attached to it. At least, that's how I'm interpreting the situation; notice that the floating arrow (that allows you to click around) is basically floating on top of the car? That's obviously not right, and definitely an indication that the path is screwed up.

If you click onto the southbound carriageway, go back in historic imagery, and then click back to the northbound carriageway, it'll get you back onto the correct alignment and you can go back to seeing the old set of images. Kind of an annoying workaround, but it's not my first rodeo with bullshit like this unfortunately.

[CtrlAltDel]

The access to older imagery seems to disappear if the Street View path doesn't perfectly align with older imagery. Since this imagery is all screwed up, the path got screwed up so GMaps thinks it new, without any older imagery attached to it.

I do believe you are right. I was vaguely aware of all the things you mention, but I never put the pieces together. It makes me want to check out that section of I-69 I brought up.

ETA: It worked.

[US 89]

One thing to file under "mildly annoying" : the distance measuring tool now measures in km.

[Revive 755]

I see Google Maps has started showing toll plazas for the Illinois tollways.  However they got a couple of the plazas types wrong at the I-90/Roselle Road interchange..  The eastbound entrance has a self service lane (which there is probably a better view available of, but Streetview keeps dumping me onto mainline I-90), and the westbound entrance from Central Road is I-Pass/EZ Pass only.

They are also missing a couple plazas at the I-90/Barrington Road interchange - every ramp at that interchange has a plaza, but the ramps on the west side are I-Pass only.

(Although right now they should be showing all the toll plazas as I-Pass only due to Covid-19.)

[jakeroot]

The access to older imagery seems to disappear if the Street View path doesn't perfectly align with older imagery. Since this imagery is all screwed up, the path got screwed up so GMaps thinks it new, without any older imagery attached to it.

I do believe you are right. I was vaguely aware of all the things you mention, but I never put the pieces together. It makes me want to check out that section of I-69 I brought up.

ETA: It worked.

It's a trick that I've used off-and-on especially along arterial roads. I really wish Google would do a better job of consolidating their paths, since it shouldn't be necessary to trick the program just to get to a path that was very recently the only path.

One thing to file under "mildly annoying" : the distance measuring tool now measures in km.

I'm still seeing miles, but see KM when in Canada. Anything unusual about your URL or location?

[webny99]

One thing to file under "mildly annoying" : the distance measuring tool now measures in km.

I'm still seeing miles, but see KM when in Canada.

Same here. The actual "ruler" shows miles only, while the pop up box gives you the total distance in both miles and km.

[ozarkman417]

It appears that Google is now telling us if carryout is available at a given restaurant, and is finally telling us which businesses are closed due to COVID-19 (most of them, anyway).

[CtrlAltDel]

One thing to file under "mildly annoying" : the distance measuring tool now measures in km.

I'm still seeing miles, but see KM when in Canada.

Same here. The actual "ruler" shows miles only, while the pop up box gives you the total distance in both miles and km.

For me, the ruler itself is in metric, even if the box shows both. Behold:

[vdeane]

This is bad enough, but for whatever reason, they've taken away access to earlier Street Views, so there's no way to see the road. Worse, I've noticed this elsewhere, most notably the newer sections of I-69 in Indiana north of Bloomington.

This is unfortunate, since looking at the older images, even if they had a lower resolution, often showed unique details as well as the change in the road over time.

The access to older imagery seems to disappear if the Street View path doesn't perfectly align with older imagery. Since this imagery is all screwed up, the path got screwed up so GMaps thinks it new, without any older imagery attached to it. At least, that's how I'm interpreting the situation; notice that the floating arrow (that allows you to click around) is basically floating on top of the car? That's obviously not right, and definitely an indication that the path is screwed up.

If you click onto the southbound carriageway, go back in historic imagery, and then click back to the northbound carriageway, it'll get you back onto the correct alignment and you can go back to seeing the old set of images. Kind of an annoying workaround, but it's not my first rodeo with bullshit like this unfortunately.

Annoying as it is, the current system does have one advantage: the ability to browse old alignments in some instances.

[jakeroot]

This is bad enough, but for whatever reason, they've taken away access to earlier Street Views, so there's no way to see the road. Worse, I've noticed this elsewhere, most notably the newer sections of I-69 in Indiana north of Bloomington.

This is unfortunate, since looking at the older images, even if they had a lower resolution, often showed unique details as well as the change in the road over time.

The access to older imagery seems to disappear if the Street View path doesn't perfectly align with older imagery. Since this imagery is all screwed up, the path got screwed up so GMaps thinks it new, without any older imagery attached to it. At least, that's how I'm interpreting the situation; notice that the floating arrow (that allows you to click around) is basically floating on top of the car? That's obviously not right, and definitely an indication that the path is screwed up.

If you click onto the southbound carriageway, go back in historic imagery, and then click back to the northbound carriageway, it'll get you back onto the correct alignment and you can go back to seeing the old set of images. Kind of an annoying workaround, but it's not my first rodeo with bullshit like this unfortunately.

Annoying as it is, the current system does have one advantage: the ability to browse old alignments in some instances.

Yeah, true. I didn't mean to imply that access to those old alignment should disappear, but where roads exist now and have existed for some time, there's no reason to have several almost-identical paths along that road. Obviously paths should stick around for old roads, even if they don't remain visible on the blue street view map.

[jakeroot]

One thing to file under "mildly annoying" : the distance measuring tool now measures in km.

I'm still seeing miles, but see KM when in Canada.

Same here. The actual "ruler" shows miles only, while the pop up box gives you the total distance in both miles and km.

For me, the ruler itself is in metric, even if the box shows both. Behold:

I'm still seeing imperial. Odd:

[CtrlAltDel]

Kudos for finding the same spot. It has personal meaning since the dealership to the east is where my car was towed when my alternator broke when I was on my way to Florida a few weeks ago, and the hotel to the west is where I stayed while waiting for them to open, since the car broke down at about 1 in the morning. The night clerk at the hotel was quite surprised at the random person getting dropped off by a giant tow truck in the middle of the night.

[ftballfan]

Kudos for finding the same spot. It has personal meaning since the dealership to the east is where my car was towed when my alternator broke when I was on my way to Florida a few weeks ago, and the hotel to the west is where I stayed while waiting for them to open, since the car broke down at about 1 in the morning. The night clerk at the hotel was quite surprised at the random person getting dropped off by a giant tow truck in the middle of the night.

Speaking of alternators breaking, about 10 years ago my family was on our way back to Michigan from Florida when the alternator broke in the family SUV just past the Adcock Rd overpass (just south of exit 55) and we had to get towed to a garage on 2nd St east of downtown. Luckily, it was just before close when we got there, so they were able to fix it and get us back on the road that evening.

[Stephane Dumas]

Some places, Google needs to update their satellite imagery. Here an sample of Apple maps showing an aera of Rock Forest, now amalgated to Sherbrooke then I was able to see via https://satellites.pro/Canada_map#45.381437,-71.981778,15  Now, compare it to Google satellite view. Satellite Pro allow to switch from Apple maps to Google maps minus Streetview and Ersi but it would had been more cool if they have Bing maps as well.

Edit: Looks like Satellite. pro automatically switch to Google maps when we're on Windows.  Well we got to use Apple Maps via DuckDuckGo.com https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Sherbrooke%2C+QC%2C+Canada&t=h_&ia=web&iaxm=maps&strict_bbox=0&bbox=45.43616763855972%2C-72.00765613361817%2C45.37958549108413%2C-71.8771934871338&metatoken=0

Edit #2: If Apple decide to allow directly Windows 10 users to use Apple Maps, that would be a big wake-up call for Google Maps but that's another story.

[CtrlAltDel]

Speaking of alternators breaking, about 10 years ago my family was on our way back to Michigan from Florida when the alternator broke in the family SUV just past the Adcock Rd overpass (just south of exit 55) and we had to get towed to a garage on 2nd St east of downtown. Luckily, it was just before close when we got there, so they were able to fix it and get us back on the road that evening.

Amazing. That's almost exactly the same place my alternator died, just after the Magnolia Plantation. I used what little battery power I had to make it to the next exit, ending up at the Chevron at exit 49, which is where I called for a tow truck.

[US 89]

One thing to file under “mildly annoying”: the distance measuring tool now measures in km.

I'm still seeing miles, but see KM when in Canada.

Same here. The actual "ruler" shows miles only, while the pop up box gives you the total distance in both miles and km.

For me, the ruler itself is in metric, even if the box shows both. Behold:

I'm still seeing imperial. Odd:

Apparently if you click the scale in the bottom right of Google Maps, it toggles between customary and metric units. I could believe I might have done that on accident, but the really weird part is that Google Earth also decided to switch to metric. Before tonight, I hadn't opened that up in at least a month. Must have been some weird Google update that came to just a few of us.

[vdeane]

Apparently if you click the scale in the bottom right of Google Maps, it toggles between customary and metric units. I could believe I might have done that on accident, but the really weird part is that Google Earth also decided to switch to metric. Before tonight, I hadn't opened that up in at least a month. Must have been some weird Google update that came to just a few of us.

Good to know.  I've been using the measurement tool when upgrading my website's photo gallery and was wondering how to get the ruler to show metric for when I get around to tagging my photos from Canada.

[sbeaver44]

Seeing this in several places in the Android App....arrows pointing the wrong way on divided highways without access control

Here in Ohio
US 11 in Virginia
US 278 on Hilton Head Island
US 23 in Kentucky

Oddly enough limited access highways seem fine, except I noticed one of the ramps in the 81/581 interchange near Roanoke is backwards.

[vdeane]

I've noticed that some businesses now have square markers.  Here are a couple of examples.  Any idea what the square is for?

[hotdogPi]

I've noticed that some businesses now have square markers.  Here are a couple of examples.  Any idea what the square is for?

They're not square on my screen.