My dad uses Google Maps, and he mentioned that it seems to be getting worse. Like, giving him directions that are obviously worse than alternatives. Has anyone else here experienced this?
It’s been broken on Fx Android for the last few weeks. I mostly use it to cross-reference information lacking on OpenStreetMap (or if I need to see photos). It sucks since locally, the only maps businesses bother with is Google.
Google consistently routes people to make a right turn across an unsignalised dual carriageway near me. (Australia, we drive on the left).
This right turn is so prone to crashes that every single weekday morning and afternoon there will be multiple tow trucks just waiting for a crash.
To avoid this intersection and turn right on to the dual carriageway at a location with traffic lights is only a matter of driving less than 1km in either direction on a parallel side street. Yet Google tells people to go past the traffic lights to make this turn. Idiocy.
to be fair, thats much more a failure of road infrastructure than it is of google, even if it could have done better.
Yeah, twice this month. It’s taken me through a dirt road (where we got stuck in the mud) and a closed road. Its also told me to turn at places where I cannot or where I must not. I’ve also checked that the car directions are selected and not “bike” or something else.
A few weeks ago I talked with a big truck driver and he said that Google maps sent him through a mud track. At the end the truck got stuck between two village houses. He lost one our to get out with the help of several neighbors. Its time to change to “Organic maps” or Osmand.
I tried organic maps once and it told me to do a u turn as the last instruction in the route, when I actually needed to turn right into my destination. I rarely drive these days but I’ll definitely try it again to see how well it does.
If you see this type of issues you can open a note in OpenStreetMap (register not required). One of the OpenStreetmap volunteers will fix the issue. Take a look at https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Notes
Thanks, good to know!
Mine is fine, but somehow my wife’s gives her the worst possible routes that are counter intuitive. We checked all settings about avoiding / not avoiding tolls, ferries, etc. She just some gets crap directions.
Wow, that’s strange. Have you tried comparing the routes it gives you to the same places, side by side?
Yes, it will reroute her to the worst possible wat to get somewhere, while mine will be direct. At first I thought she had bus or walking enabled, but it is set on car, and we have same route settings. I don’t understand it, unless the google algorithm looks at your driving history or something like her phone GPS satellites used are different and somehow location info is different–even though the car tracks on the street possible.
That must have something to do with like A/B testing or something. Like she’s in the guinea pig cohort where she gets the “experimental” routes.
Maybe the answer, to see if routes are valid. They picked the wrong test subject though, she gets so frustrated she sometimes gives up on the trip. lol
Does it give her bad directions on one device or everywhere she is signed into Google?
I think it seems that way because it’s trying to promote alternative routes. whether it’s routing around slowdowns, taking a more fuel efficient route, or whatever.
however this could also be due to the user having different expectations for different trips and not changing the settings.
They switched from giving you the fastest route by default to giving you the one that uses the least gas.
They also now offer alternative routes that take you past businesses which paid money to Google.That’s in your trip options “prefer fuel efficient route”. You can turn it off.
I know. But I won’t.
Hypermiling is as fun to me as driving fast is for others.
It’s like a mini-game I get to play every time I’m forced to drive a car.I hypermile casually but I’m not sacrificing travel time to save a bit of gas.
Ahh, I misinterpreted your post as a complaint. I’m not a hypermiler, but I do find the efficient routes are often the lowest stress routes as well.
Elites loves to treat working class time as a zero-value resource. It’s just assumed that everyone is willing to give up hours a week if it means using fewer plastic bags, or less gas, or taking a bus instead of a car, or charging their car during off peak hours, or whatever.
Time is treated as negligible in value.
I know it’s not new, but I’ve been seeing a lot more “suggested” (read: sponsored) places along my routes these days. Either businesses are just now discovering the feature, or they lowered the barrier for entry. Either way, it’s annoying as fuck to have ads pop up that I have to avoid when moving the map around to navigate
It’s an intentional move they’ve been testing. Looks like you’re one of the “lucky” participants.
Apparently everyone ITT has had 100 times more trouble with Google maps than I ever have had. Seriously entire categories of problems I’ve never experienced. Google maps has never tried to make me drive through a yard or field for example. Been using it since before it was a smartphone app.
It’s been discussed in other comments that because Google is A/B testing their old maps model against a new AI model that only some people are experiencing it. It’s probably only being tested in some areas.
Google maps has never tried to make me drive through a yard or field for example.
Did someone complain about that? I’m seeing tons of complains and none of them are this
Yeah ITT I saw someone say it tried to take them through a field and a barn, and someone else said someone’s yard. I thought it was weird.
Absolutely. Not only does it show ads now, it’s so busy that it’s distracting and hard to keep track of your route.
Here’s some “high quality” (heh heh) anecdata for you: I navigated from my house in Somerville to a restaurant in the Seaport district of Boston last night, in the POURING rain using public transit and walking.
Google maps literally was leading me around in circles downtown once I got off the train, so I switched to Apple Maps and it was straight shooting from there on in.
I think GMaps is more susceptible to the tall buildings fouling the GPS. Not sure why?
It coincides with their switch to more and more “AI” black box models. Whereas before they would use a hand-tuned heuristic model to describe whether you are turning, merging, or continuing on a road, they just use a less correct but automagic model where they still inevitably have to tune it a whole lot but it is “AI” so it has the approval of the petty lords of management.
Incorrect entrances and closed roads are another example. They’re just using satellite and street level imagery and tossing it at some models that spit out things like “door 99% confidence” and “road 98% confidence” while neglecting the question of, “are you actually allowed/able to use this?”
PS under basically every correct answer in this category is a team of poorly-paid “labelers” whose answers directly turn into the data in the map. Your door-that-is-not-an-entrance was marked entrance because someone making $8/hr only had 10 seconds to review before moving to the next question.
Google Maps is headed by Ray Kurzweil, who refuses to see any downsides to AI.
AI being a great thing is a postulate for this guy.
lmao the futurology grifter
I thought he was head of AI not maps tho
Semi recently had mine try to take me through a private business parking lot which was entirely fenced off, and didn’t even connect on the other side. That was… confusing, to say the least.
Google is doing a lot of A and B testing right now. Some days I habe to use Bing or duckduckgo, no matter what, or else I get shit results.
I haven’t had any issues with Google maps recently, occasionally it’ll try to take me on a more “fuel efficient” route. Recently my wife used apple maps and it took us to the wrong location, it kept trying to take us to Washington township when the address we entered was in Washington heights.
I’m always concerned about google maps because the alternatives suck, but google is making their services awful, one by one. I’m waiting for the day that google maps becomes terrible too. I do have openstreetmaps (using organic maps on android) and I fixed a few things about my local area there but it doesn’t have some of the features I’d like and it doesn’t seem like they have plans to add them.
Just as an example, business reviews. I can use yelp but it is nice that it’s right there. Also, the user submitted things like speed traps, accidents, etc.
Fascinating, I’ve found better results with Apple Maps lately than Google Maps. Which blew my mind, because Apple Maps was a complete joke when it launched.
In our experience Google maps updates traffic conditions faster than apple maps. But Google maps tends to pick more routes that I wouldn’t consider the most efficient, ex: getting off the highway sooner and taking back roads vs going up another exit closer to the destination. But like I said we have had a few times where apple maps has gotten confused with places with similar names.
i tend to use waze more anyway
Waze is owned by Google, and they’re slowly converging over time.
Yeah, about 2 months ago I noticed it no longer recommending a slightly alternate route on my way to work that lets me bypass a potentially 20-minute red light (bad light timing)
If I turn and do it myself it goes “oh shit you right” and gives me an updated ETA and shows the route, but it WONT show the expected slowdown anymore and WONT even suggest the alternate route
Does route calculation happen on device or on Google servers? Is it cheaper for Google to not show alternate routes?
I assume the route calculations happen on device as they work in offline mode, but that doesn’t explain sending me the objectively slower way when it knows what the traffic is like
Also my alternate route passes more businesses, meaning it’s not some “well advertise to him” bullshit
I turned OFF the “prefer eco routed” setting thinking it might be that, but no dice
