Google Maps just fucking SUCKS now

[LilianaUwU]

Anybody noticing that street view seems to have gotten blurrier?  It's not nearly as bad as the old 2007-2009 imagery, but it's noticeably harder to see and read signs.  At first I thought it was a camera issue with the 2024 imagery that recently appeared, but it happens with older imagery too.

There are lots of places where they are allowing third parties to capture imagery, and it's always poorer quality. You can usually see the vehicle carrying the cameras intruding on the bottom edge. I don't object where it's from remote places that Google hasn't gone and isn't likely to go, but when they replace three-year-old clear imagery of well-traveled roads with crappy third-party imagery, that's when I wish they'd give us a button to disable it and stick to the older, better imagery.

It's even worse when there's already official Street View imagery that is more recent, yet when I pop in, it gives me older third-party imagery (as in user-submitted). Why does it default me to the shitty alternative? Wouldn't Google want me to see what their cameras can do?

[Molandfreak]

Anybody noticing that street view seems to have gotten blurrier?  It's not nearly as bad as the old 2007-2009 imagery, but it's noticeably harder to see and read signs.  At first I thought it was a camera issue with the 2024 imagery that recently appeared, but it happens with older imagery too.

There are lots of places where they are allowing third parties to capture imagery, and it's always poorer quality. You can usually see the vehicle carrying the cameras intruding on the bottom edge. I don't object where it's from remote places that Google hasn't gone and isn't likely to go, but when they replace three-year-old clear imagery of well-traveled roads with crappy third-party imagery, that's when I wish they'd give us a button to disable it and stick to the older, better imagery.

I'm fine with this if there isn't any alternative imagery, or if the alternative imagery is very old. There's some third-party stuff in Botswana that looks decent.

[Rothman]

Anybody noticing that street view seems to have gotten blurrier?  It's not nearly as bad as the old 2007-2009 imagery, but it's noticeably harder to see and read signs.  At first I thought it was a camera issue with the 2024 imagery that recently appeared, but it happens with older imagery too.

The third-party stuff is horrendous.

[vdeane]

I should mention that none of the imagery I was talking about was third-party.  All of it was from Google.  It's affecting everything street view, as if it's not downloading properly.

That said, I do agree with the complaints about third-party imagery.  I do not understand why they default to it.  Worse, they sometimes block the ability to switch away from it even when Google imagery is available.

[Molandfreak]

Wisconsin Dells starts to show on the map at a larger zoom level than Madison. 

[Scott5114]

I should mention that none of the imagery I was talking about was third-party.  All of it was from Google.  It's affecting everything street view, as if it's not downloading properly.

That said, I do agree with the complaints about third-party imagery.  I do not understand why they default to it.  Worse, they sometimes block the ability to switch away from it even when Google imagery is available.

Does a hard refresh (Ctrl+Shift+R) or zoom reset (Ctrl+Shift+zero) help?

[intelati49]

Ugh.... I searched for a business, but the Maps is different again. Was looking for the street view, but there was no man to drag and drop??

(All on desktop of course)

[vdeane]

Ugh.... I searched for a business, but the Maps is different again. Was looking for the street view, but there was no man to drag and drop??

(All on desktop of course)

Did it fail to fully load?  I had that happen today and had to refresh.

[SeriesE]

Street view now gets confused at over/underpasses and will now randomly switch to the other one when clicking to move the picture. So annoying.

[Rothman]

Street view now gets confused at over/underpasses and will now randomly switch to the other one when clicking to move the picture. So annoying.

It's been that way for years.  Ridiculously annoying.

[Scott5114]

Street view now gets confused at over/underpasses and will now randomly switch to the other one when clicking to move the picture. So annoying.

It's been that way for years.  Ridiculously annoying.

It does seem like it's gotten worse over the years, though.

[pderocco]

It needs a function where, in order to jump to a different track, you have to hold the shift key down or something.

BTW, Google Earth is vastly worse in its implementation of Street View.

[Molandfreak]

Street view now gets confused at over/underpasses and will now randomly switch to the other one when clicking to move the picture. So annoying.

It's been that way for years.  Ridiculously annoying.

It does seem like it's gotten worse over the years, though.

There used to be an option to drag along the road line in the mobile app that was much better than how the current app or desktop version works. And it never kicked me off the alignment I was following.

[epzik8]

Is it me, or did they switch the default view to satellite?

[CtrlAltDel]

Is it me, or did they switch the default view to satellite?

It seems that it has on my end. I might not have noticed if you hadn't said anything, since I almost never use map view because I find the colors unpleasant.

It makes me wonder if enough other people have been doing so as well that Google noticed and changed the default in response.

[hotdogPi]

I haven't seen a switch. I checked both logged in and logged out.

[LilianaUwU]

Is it me, or did they switch the default view to satellite?

They did for me. I thought it was because I always switch to satellite view.

[Rothman]

Something like that happened to me earlier today -- default satellite.  But, came back to it later on and maps was default.

[CovalenceSTU]

Is it possible to be shadowbanned from editing the map? I've submitted three edits: one to add OR-500 to the Alsea-Deadwood Hwy (rejected despite official inventory and GSV), and twice rerouting an overpass that was closed and bypassed many years ago. I've received email confirmation for all three, but even months later only the first shows up under my edits.

[epzik8]

Is it me, or did they switch the default view to satellite?

It seems that it has on my end. I might not have noticed if you hadn't said anything, since I almost never use map view because I find the colors unpleasant.

It makes me wonder if enough other people have been doing so as well that Google noticed and changed the default in response.

I've taken to switching to traffic mode, then turning off traffic conditions to get to the "normal" map. Kind of annoying.

[cjw2001]

Is it possible to be shadowbanned from editing the map? I've submitted three edits: one to add OR-500 to the Alsea-Deadwood Hwy (rejected despite official inventory and GSV), and twice rerouting an overpass that was closed and bypassed many years ago. I've received email confirmation for all three, but even months later only the first shows up under my edits.

No they pick on everyone.   Their moderation process is highly automated (not in a good way) and the human reviewers are not great. 

[hotdogPi]

Mine have generally been accepted, but one of mine just made things worse because I requested to rename a 500-foot stretch of road and they renamed the entire road to the name the 500-foot segment had.

[Rothman]

Google Timeline only being available on my phone really, really still sucks.  The lack of ability to export data from my phone is also quite frustrating.

I will complain about this again and again.

[Rothman]

Ah, I found an export function hidden in the depths of my settings...but it exports as a .json.  So, I evidently need to learn Python in order to convert the .json into some geographic form in order to actually use it.

Grrrrr...

...

On a side note of great side-ness: GitHub drives me crazy as someone with no background whatsoever with modern programming (BASIC, anyone?)...well, anything beyond finding visual basic code online and pasting it into modules in Excel.  The documentation I've always been directed to has been wonderfully Orwellian and takes gatekeeping to a true art form.

[pderocco]

Ah, I found an export function hidden in the depths of my settings...but it exports as a .json.  So, I evidently need to learn Python in order to convert the .json into some geographic form in order to actually use it.

What do you want to export to? And for what purpose? I've never used Google Timeline, but I understand that its sample rate is really low. Whenever I go somewhere new, or where I'm likely to take pictures, I use a GPS logger phone app, and export the logs to files on my personal computer. It samples at 1Hz, so you see every turn. It's kind of cool to look at a track through the mountains and see where you pulled over to enjoy the view.