Google Maps just fucking SUCKS now

[7/8]

This is the first day I've gotten the new colours, for both my phone and computer. Overall I'm happy with the update, it's so much easier to see local roads than before (the previous white on light grey was always hard to see). However, I think a darker shade of grey for freeways would make them easier to distinguish from other highways.

[vdeane]

Yeah, the roll-out has been completed for me, all of my devices are utilizing it now.

So far, I think the new colors are excellent. It's a big improvement from before, especially with the traffic overlay enabled, which no longer has conflicting colors.

There also seems to be new symbology that isn't just color. Parking lots (diagonal lines) and certain sections of park path (when zoomed in, you can see they are dotted) are things I notice right away.

Conflicting colors?  I never had a hard time with that on the routes.

Discerning which parks were what -- that was and still is annoying.  Zooming in on my phone briefly shows more boundaries for half a millisecond, and then it all becomes mush.  Blech.

I don't recall conflicting colors on the traffic either.  I don't know what it is, but the new traffic actually seems kinda cartoonish for some reason.

EDIT: As do the driving directions.

[index]

Not too big a fan of the new color update. It would be less so if they returned the differentiation between freeways and major surface roads. I also feel like it would pose accessibility issues for certain people due to the low contrast.

The wonders of AI...

I don't get it. What exactly do you mean

[pderocco]

One nice thing is that when you zoom way in with aerial imagery enabled, it fades out the lines so that you can see the striping and the road surface condition. The old version didn't do that. Old Google Earth did, but that disappeared when they did a major rev a year or two ago. I hope it comes back in Google Earth, too.

[jakeroot]

Yeah, the roll-out has been completed for me, all of my devices are utilizing it now.

So far, I think the new colors are excellent. It's a big improvement from before, especially with the traffic overlay enabled, which no longer has conflicting colors.

There also seems to be new symbology that isn't just color. Parking lots (diagonal lines) and certain sections of park path (when zoomed in, you can see they are dotted) are things I notice right away.

Conflicting colors?  I never had a hard time with that on the routes.

Discerning which parks were what -- that was and still is annoying.  Zooming in on my phone briefly shows more boundaries for half a millisecond, and then it all becomes mush.  Blech.

I don't recall conflicting colors on the traffic either.  I don't know what it is, but the new traffic actually seems kinda cartoonish for some reason.

EDIT: As do the driving directions.

The orange traffic color (middle-level jam or something) conflicted with the yellow-orange arterial route color. The new blue/grey color scheme no longer shares any colors with the traffic legend.

[Hunty2022]

My Google maps app finally updated to the new colors. I did find a huge patch with the old colors, which disappeared when I moved away from it.



I'm pretty sure I still have some old google maps tabs on my computer with the old colors.

[seicer]

Not too big a fan of the new color update. It would be less so if they returned the differentiation between freeways and major surface roads. I also feel like it would pose accessibility issues for certain people due to the low contrast.

The wonders of AI...

AI has nothing to do with the changing of the color scheme on Google Maps.

[pderocco]

So far, I mostly like the new colors on my phone, because in most places the lesser roads show up better against the background. That was always my biggest beef with not only Google, but Bing and MapQuest too: almost impossible to see the tiny roads. On a desktop or laptop, it's less an issue, because you're not trying to look at it while driving, with the light from the sun, vehicles, signals, or signage constantly shifting.

But, as others have noted, there's still the issue that there is no color-coding of the kinds of roads. Color paper maps usually used different colors for minor roads, divided non-freeways, freeways, and toll roads. However, the new traffic display seems to put the traffic colors right on top of the road, where the old map put them along the left and right edges so you could always see the underlying line color.

[bzakharin]

Did they have different colors for toll roads before? I don't seem to recall, but they're different now. This is only visible at higher zoom levels and sems pretty fine-grained. For example, at https://www.google.com/maps/@39.5807841,-74.4572356,17.71z?entry=ttu you can see the Northbound Garden State Parkway is marked as toll past exit 50, since that's the last exit before the toll barrier.

[Roadgeekteen]

The new google maps colors are so ass

[pderocco]

I just spent a few days driving around the SF Bay Area, and was using the new Google Maps on my phone extensively. I think it's a definite improvement, especially when looking at it in a moving car, including at night when the phone screen is dimmed. I also think it could be improved more, but it's a step in the right direction.

[MATraveler128]

 

My Google maps app finally updated to the new colors. I did find a huge patch with the old colors, which disappeared when I moved away from it.

My Google Maps on my iPad has the opposite problem where there's a patch of the new colors surrounded by the old colors. However my phone has since updated fully to the new colors.

[hotdogPi]

Wait, how is 95 clear? This is current (tail end of rush hour), right?

[Amaury]

Does anyone know why Google Maps doesn't show the boundary lines for all communities? I thought maybe it only showed boundary lines for cities and towns, but not census-designated places and unincorporated communities. However, that's not the case, as it will show boundary lines for cities, towns, CDPs, and UICs, though in the case of the latter two, it's not all of them for some reason.

For example, Ronald, Washington, is a UIC and has a boundary line: https://maps.app.goo.gl/w9ahEs7Np2Wc4Bdd9 Dryden, Washington, is also a UIC, but has no boundary line: https://maps.app.goo.gl/i7VqUkPw9qMf2DyMA

Similarly, for example, Parker, Washington, is a CDP and has boundary line: https://maps.app.goo.gl/QhpPfpwTWaK1Dxz37 Donald, Washington, is also a CDP, but has no boundary line: https://maps.app.goo.gl/XqRzBnjZehuvuv4X6

[pderocco]

I don't know the answer, but in poking around I found myself wishing I could hold Ctrl down while clicking town names to turn multiple boundaries on at the same time. Doesn't work that way, though. But in Google Earth, you simply select a layer to turn them all on.

I notice that Boston MA has a boundary, but some of the sections of it have their own boundaries, like Brighton and Allston.

Back to the "sucks now" topic: when I'm clicking these things, I see that the programmers insisted on making it zoom in to whatever I've selected. I wish they'd stop trying to be so "helpful".

[hotdogPi]

Not all of the neighborhoods of Boston can have boundaries because they're not defined. Allston and Brighton have their own ZIP codes, defining their boundaries that way.

[7/8]

Has anyone else noticed the distance tool isn't straight smooth? I don't remember seeing this issue before:


Even zooming in doesn't fix it:

[7/8]

My Google maps app finally updated to the new colors. I did find a huge patch with the old colors, which disappeared when I moved away from it.

I got a glimpse of the old colours while flying over western NY a few days ago. I checked today and it shows the new colours.

[JayhawkCO]

Has anyone else noticed the distance tool isn't straight? I don't remember seeing this issue before:

Mine only has one kink in it. Guessing maybe it's trying to approximate a great circle?

[7/8]

Has anyone else noticed the distance tool isn't straight? I don't remember seeing this issue before:

Mine only has one kink in it. Guessing maybe it's trying to approximate a great circle?

Yes, I should've said "smooth", not "straight". It should be a great circle, but it used to not have noticeable kinks.

[vdeane]

Has anyone else noticed the distance tool isn't straight? I don't remember seeing this issue before:

Mine only has one kink in it. Guessing maybe it's trying to approximate a great circle?

Note that 7/8 is in globe view, so there should be no approximating - it should appear straight to us on the map.  This happens even outside of globe view - what used to be a nice round arc is now noticeably a series of lines.

[pderocco]

My Google maps app finally updated to the new colors. I did find a huge patch with the old colors, which disappeared when I moved away from it.

I got a glimpse of the old colours while flying over western NY a few days ago. I checked today and it shows the new colours.

I expect that the new and old tiles have the same URL, and the old one happened to be in the browser's cache still.

[freebrickproductions]

It seems they also use a yellow-ish color for highways when looking at satellite view.

[LilianaUwU]

I get the new colors when I go to the website, but as soon as I zoom in or out it reverts to old colors.

[pderocco]

They have different tiles for different zoom levels, too, so that's understandable. Clear your browser cache, and I doubt you'll see any old colors any more.