Ask HN: Is the quality of Google Maps going downhill?

I switched to Apple Maps a while ago. Google Maps kept directing me to take traffic shortcuts that might have saved 30 seconds but then required unprotected left turns across multi-lane roads (western U.S.). It got to where I had to inspect my next few turns at red lights to make sure it wasn't trying to be too "helpful." YMMV but I've been pretty happy with Apple Maps.

Edit: I forgot the name of the setting (no longer have GMaps on my phone) but I know there's a way to make it more or less aggressive. I did play with this before dropping GMaps but it had no effect.

I would agree, the UX is really clunky. Apple Maps used to be a complete joke but I tried it out a year or so ago after they did a big push to update it. For driving it is really good, for public transport or biking it is very city dependent. However, outside of North America I think Google maps is still superior.

I have a couple issues with Google Maps on my iPhone over the last few months

1) it has trouble connecting to its own servers, leaving me in offline mode for an indeterminate amount of time, whereas Apple Maps was ready to go with live data. It seems Google Maps is not able to currently tell connectivity changes well, or that Apple Maps has a priority networking route or downloads things in advance.

2) Google Maps also has begun choosing unnecessary routes. I didn't use to need to double check and use my own head (as one should), but this is more frequent now as I don't trust it in this area. Yes, last night I was mid trip and saw Google Maps route but didn't have a place to pull over and tinker with it so I opened Apple Maps and just used its route which was quite different. The irony is that I had just finished jokingly making fun of someone for probably "being an Apple Music and Apple Maps user".

The web UI has some weird rendering bugs that were introduced with the last reskin. For example, at certain zoom levels highway ramps disappear so the highways look disconnected.

Edit: as an example, look at https://www.google.com/maps/@43.6264803,-79.321245,11.34z The highway labelled "427" on the left looks disconnected from the "Gardiner Expwy" until you zoom in further. I expect basic details like this to work.

Being from an area where the roads are bad, I often share this sentiment. There have been many occasions where GMaps has rerouted me to a road that seems shorter but the quality of the road is pathetic. Feels like there should be a gyro sensor sending back information as to the quality of the road. Possibly it’s like a black swan type event that the maps designers have not thought of?

After ads started appearing on google maps coupled with my new iPhone I switched over to Apple Maps to give it a shot. For the sf bay area found Apple Maps has just as good navigation but is more pleasant to use. Now primarily using apple maps

I had to delete Google Maps from my phone. It was extremely bloated. Way too many unnecessary features caused the app to suck my battery dry and run very slowly. I switched to Apple Maps as well and have had 0 issues.

It's kind of a shame, just 4 years ago I used Google Maps every day to route through brutal traffic, and I thought it was the best thing ever. But those maps engineers gotta get promoted somehow, I guess.

The house number locations in the UK irks me. I submitted corrections for my neighbourhood for all house numbers. A year later, they all get moved back to roughly where they were.

It took me a while to figure out it's detecting the house numbers from Street View pictures and overriding my corrections.

It has felt to me over the last few years (and I have no inside knowledge) that Google Maps saw Apple Maps fail at launch, and didn't improve the service at all.

Meanwhile, Apple Maps and the OpenStreetMaps backing data has continued to get better and better each year.

I live in a reasonably rural part of the UK in an old farmhouse with historic public rights of way criss-crossing the land around here. One day google decided that a footpath through a wooded area just wide enough for a quad was public highway and started giving driving directions through it. There's no place to turn, the gradient is steep and, once you're committed, the road surface is, errr, mud. Cue umpteen drivers getting stuck, panicing or grounding out on the occassionally fast flowing ford at the bottom.

I'm guessing image rec on some new satellite imagery convinced it it must be a road.

No amount of reporting a mapping problem to google has changed anything. When I reported something similar in Apple maps a couple of years ago, the change was reflected within a couple of weeks.

Everything here is comparing Apple Maps and Google Maps, which is fair as the front-runners.

For those of us on Android though, does anyone have a good replacement app suggestion for Google Maps? Waze/OpenStreetMaps/etc? I've never tried them and would prefer not to trial them by fire, since I usually use them when I need to get somewhere for an appt or something :)

The main problem in NYC is that it never knows which direction you're facing when you get off the subway, and if you're visiting an unfamiliar area, you could walk a few blocks in the wrong direction before it/you figure it out.

Other than that, I did find that it got noticeably a lot slower a few years ago.

I can't hate though--I have never built anything remotely as complicated.

What annoys me is that if a business is running paid ads, you cannot click their organic location, you have to click on the square paid listing, costing them money-- even if you were explicitly looking for said organization and not entering through a non-branded term. Certain businesses (probably non-paying?) don't seem to show up as prominently, even when you zoom in on their building. They will have a claimed/populated profile, but for some reason, the interactive pin/location title will not show up even at the highest zoom level.

What I can say is that the Android app performance is horrible compared to what it was 5 years ago.

When I bought my OnePlus3 it was amazingly fast — basically instant, now it takes up to 20 seconds for it to become responsive. Clicking on a search result results in 5 seconds of camera panning, loading UI elements and the likes.

Google is becoming more and more like Microsoft

Google Maps on my iPhone 12 is constantly being isolated from the network after locking and then unlocking. I have to kill the app to get it to work again and still that only works half the time.

For me I had to disable a newish setting called "Prefer Fuel-efficent routes". It's in navigation settings.

It too aggressively took me on a highway and I don't even think it was too effective in being fuel efficient.

Google maps sometimes gives strange routes, like routing onto a frontage road and then back onto the highway for seemingly no reason. I guess it's trying to avoid perceived traffic or something?

The only feature that has me staying is "search along route" and support for multiple hops. It's quite nice to ad-hoc add a stop for a coffee or restroom to my longer route, or to plan out a multiple stop drive.

Do any other maps apps for iOS have that implemented well now?

Busy area spots hide the map, weather wastes space, „what‘s going on“ wasting lots of bottom space, sights with huge 2D icons, ads, see nearby attractions, “search this area“...

Google Maps has become a user hostile mess.

I just opened Apple Maps for the first time and it‘s almost completely free of bullshit. Guess I will give it a chance.

I'm not sure about the quality. But the interface is bloated by default. I switched to HERE

I find it sometimes zooms in or out when it shouldn't. And I sometimes bump the AR button accidentally.

And reporting some types of map errors, such as incorrect lane guidance, and temporary street closures, never seems to be acted on.

It's always going to vary depending on your location. Google Maps still has far richer business listings, Apple Maps is getting there in capital cities but still nowhere near as close as Google.

I'm in Australia, a recent example I had was I typed in the supermarket chain "Woolworths" into Apple Maps search, started navigating, before realising it was navigating me to a petrol station that once upon a time had a Woolworths shop attached. Apple Maps literally did not differentiate between supermarkets and petrol station shops.

I have noticed this trend among almost all the Google products I use.

YouTube getting rid of dislikes, adding in music mixes, and of course striking videos while providing less than adequate descriptions (if any) of the offending material.

Gmail mixes in ads with your emails more aggressively than ever before.

Google music has been replaced with YouTube music, an inferior, less usable version of the same product, but now it's tied in with your YouTube account so you get spammed with music recommendations that are frankly terrible.

Google Drive, actually scanning your files for unapproved materials.

Google Mini with a voice so eardrum-burstingly loud (and shrill) and no ability to control it separately like you can with Maps.

And of course their search itself has experienced a very noticeable drop in quality and seems now to be a Google Marketplace of Approved Agendas. Not just with the pop up "helpful" cards, but with the actual search itself. It's quite eye opening to do the same search on DDG and find useful results that weren't visible on the first 10 pages of Google.

This isn't even including the other products which I did like, but Google suddenly decided that I don't need anymore.

Google Docs still works well though.