Asklemmy

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.

Yes. I know this is like.. Cliche but I do want to say that I've heard of, and downloaded a new map app called Organic Maps(Play Store). BUT I haven't used it for navigation yet.

About two days after I found it, play store deleted it but I can link it, so it must be back up. If you just open it, it looks beautiful and immediately you notice that stores are not paying money to be prioritized. You can see ALL the businesses equally and I love it.

Do you see a leaf next to the directions, that means it's taking the most fuel efficient route not the fastest, it's the default I believe. I don't think it's very effective.

Gmaps is still definitely getting worse over time regardless.

Personally, I’ve been seeing way more markers when you zoom in for bigger businesses meaning they are probably going heavy on pay to show.

I don't use gmap for navigation but to check locations. I had to get some cash so looked up atm and found few nearby. When I went there it was just apartments so looked up another one which turned out to just homes and small shops. Ended up getting off and asked someone working in the shop for directions and got everything I could have wanted.

Makes sense. Google has been replacing skilled engineers with tail-eating AI regurgitation engines, which are getting progressively worse as they eat their own shit.

But I've been told those regurgitation engines are about to get really smart and replace all skilled labor.

So maybe it'll be fine.

Or maybe, as we've already started to see, more and more useful stuff will only be available via the Internet wayback machine, until they kill it.

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

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.

In the last six months, yes. It suggests short cuts that can create long delays. Shorter by miles, but often worse in the end.

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.

Just like their search engine, making you scroll down further and potentially not even wanting you to leave their page, maps is trying to send you into the vicinity of more physically so you can go into their store and tell them that you found them along a route suggestion.

I don't think the above is true. At this point I'm just trying to give them ideas on how to enshittify it more.

In my experience, google maps is really bad at finding parking. OSM-data is just better in this regard

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.

I'd say yes. Earlier this week, it navigated me, and I assume a metric ton of people through road construction. Took me over an hour to get to My destination. There's no chance that was actually the fastest route. 0 chance road construction and stalled cars was faster than literally anything else

Yes. It's hard to make out the map with all the pinned ads sometimes, and I've had multiple times this year where it has taken me to the wrong place. Every time that happens, I boot up Organic Maps and get right to my destination.

Absolutely. Not only does it show ads now, it's so busy that it's distracting and hard to keep track of your route.

I've been getting weird walking instructions. Like 6 min walk is +30 to avoid some invisible barrier.

I use google maps every day. Wouldn't say it's been getting worse.