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?
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.
When AI gets applied to robot bodies, real world results will be able to trim out bad knowledge. Currently because AI only feeds on internet content, all the AI has to eat is human content and AI content.
AI will drift away from accuracy until it gets embodied at which point it will start to get more accurate.
Just have a nuclear reactor to run the LLM on the robot and you’re all set
Real world experience can help, but what we have now is also too stupid to recognize when it’s succeeding or failing. It just greedily gobbles up inputs and feedback indiscriminately.
There’s currently no way to know if the necessary advancement, to advance independently of humans, is 2 years or 2000 years away.
Even so, nature tells us that advancement probably isn’t coming at all. It’s not needed, so long as there are billions of humans available to partner with.
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!
Google/Waze will volunteer users to take alternative routes to scout out ways around congestion. It can be a better route, but you are the guinea pig, so you can get the short end of the stick.
There also is learned driving habits that may inform routing choices.
That’s pretty interesting about the scout cars.Is there any sort of indication thats what they’re doing? I will say given Google’s track record I wouldn’t put it past them to intentionally route traffic near where their paid advertiser’s money comes from.
No indication except for knowing the area and being sent a strange way that doesn’t make sense to you.
The routing is ambivalent to advertising money. The driving data they sell informs where advertisers put money. Horse, then cart; not cart, then horse.
So far… I can easily see some MBA wanting to add that “feature”. They have your driving history, they could easily route someone with Starbucks stops past more Starbucks for a fee.
I was in New Mexico recently and Google Maps gave me a route from Bandelier National Monument to Santa Fe that included a “shortcut” through the Los Alamos National Laboratory campus. I got to meet a security guard.
So, yes. I would say I have experienced this.
Am from Malaysia and since the road and street is named using local language(bahasa malaysia), google now read out the full road name in terrible accent and pronunciation it took 3 or 4 times longer to finish an instruction readout, which in some case you will miss your turn. The instruction sometime couldn’t even fit on the UI because the road name is just so long. It also read out which lane you should take just for turning. Before the change i can easily navigate the confusing city of Kuala Lumpur because the instruction is clear and concise, now i have to fight with the instruction because 3rd quarter of the time it’s a language i can’t recognise due to the terrible pronunciation.
Ohh did i mention the ads? They found a way to sneak ads into navigation. Now if you want to turn left 500m ahead, instead of telling you “turn left” , they will tell you to turn left after “xyz shop”. Now you will be looking for that shop instead of turn left. The app is maintained by techbros that never drive
You’ve given me flashbacks. I lived in Japan for a few years and occasionally Google would go ahead and read out the street names in Chinese instead of Japanese as though Google maps doesn’t have an exact GPS coordinate for me and thus a pretty good idea of what language those signs should be in. Drove me INSANE. Trying to get around and suddenly my gps is speaking to me in a language I don’t know
It’s definitely been getting worse. The written directions aren’t always accurate. Exits sometimes have the wrong label. Lanes are missing on the highways when they merge and separate.
I’ve also seen a similar thing with routes not always showing up or giving bad directions. It attempted to take me through a school bus barn and even through someone’s yard once.
Organic Maps and OsmAnd is better.
Do you know if either of these incorporate traffic conditions?
as they are privacy focused and have significantly fewer users, not yet.
but, the more users contributing and making requests, the sooner it could be integrated.
you can help by being one of those users!
Thanks for the info!
Does it save route history? Or destinations? That’s one feature I like with Google, disregarding any privacy concerns.
I use OsmAnd+ and you can configure it to save a track every time you use navigation. It can also send that track live to self hosted tracking servers. You need to enable the trip recording plugin.
My biggest gripe with Organic Street Maps (and every OSM) client that I’ve tried is that I can’t find a way to display the destination address when I get close. I do some delivery work and that drives me crazy. Otherwise, it’s great.
This isn’t a new thing but I hate anytime it asks me a question. I’ll be driving through an accident scene trying to work out where the cop directing traffic wants me to go and if I’ll need to go a different way because the turn I was gonna make is blocked off and at that precise moment google maps decides it’s a great idea to cover the bottom half of the screen with a “is tHeRe sTiLl An aCcIdEnT hErE?”
If it’s illegal to use your phone while driving it should be illegal for navigation apps to suddenly require interaction in the middle of navigating.
I ignore those types of notices.
Yes.
They will often display prompts while driving that are on a timer “suggesting” route changes or alternates and auto selecting yes.
To abbreviate massively and not dox myself, this caused me serious financial harm as a road trip rerouted onto roads unsafe for my vehicle.
I loathe Google and many tech companies for their sheer and ardent refusal to have proper customer service, or any method of customer feedback. A/B testing will never tell you that the top navigation directions should focus on the major high numbers and road names, not what road segment you are on. I need to know what lane to be in for my next turn in 5 miles, not how many times I will fade merge between segements only to have you finally tell me the lane when I’m a quarter mile away.
Google Maps is fucking awful in so many ways that are inexcusable, and worst of all they were allowed to fucking buy more of their competitors. Right now Magic Earth is a distant also ran in this field, and due to Google’s massive proprietary features always will be without support.
And I haven’t even mentioned how my map results are plastered with promoted ads and locations. Which is just useless and infuriating when I am searching for a specific placename.
There’s an option to prefer fuel saving routes, which are worse most of the time. This was a kinda recent chance and it is enabled by default, try to disable it and see if it helps
It does indicate the “fuel efficient” route pretty clearly though, and always gives multiple other options including the quickest one that isn’t as efficient. If this is what’s causing the issue, OP just needs to look closer at what’s on their screen.
needs to look closer at what’s on their screen
IT guy here. The number of tickets I could close with this as the root cause.
You expect me to READ!? The audacity! 😤
Honestly I wish you were able to. Some of these people have no excuse to be as ill proficient as they are, and maybe that would change if you could just tell them they ‘read mother fucker’ and let nature take it’s course.
In my experience, the “quickest” are more fuel efficient than the “fuel efficient” routes, which take me through residential areas (where every intersection is protected, meaning a stop sign in at least 1 direction) or stair-stepping on county roads where the speed-up/slow-down cycle negates the benefit of driving on slower roads.
That’s fair, although I think that depends a lot on the type of car you drive. There’s an option to tell Maps what type of car you drive (electric, hybrid, or gas), which will change the results, because cars with regenerative breaking often get better “city” milage than “highway” milage.
It also probably depends on factors like how aerodynamic your vehicle is, because it makes a huge difference above ~50mph (air resistance/drag increases exponentially with speed)
Fun fact, they let you tell them what kind of vehicle you have for the fuel efficient route. So when we told it we have a PHEV, it started recommending more surface streets than highways. Kinda cool.
Interesting. I’ll let him know. Thanks.
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On routes with few starts and stops, the route with the lower speed limit is the more fuel efficient one. Higher speed means higher drag (by the square of speed).
Mostly because that would be a shorter route then, cars have gears and are more efficient under a higher load so a higher speed, usually around 100kph is most efficient
Drag is where energy is lost. Drag is a function of speed.
I know, but a car’s efficiency is dependent on more factors than speed and friction alone
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.
I love Organic Maps. I used it quite a lot for navigation across Europe and here’s my list of findings in order from good to bad
- The maps are visually much clearer than Google Maps
- Businesses are all visible like you said, and so are street names, etc. I don’t know what Google did, but often zooming on something won’t get you the labels. With Organic Maps it just works. On the other hand, businesses are often missing or outdated. Google’s database is way more current and complete.
- Walking paths, benches, bins, etc. are usually better mapped-out (because it’s built on OpenStreetMap). On the flipside, this community-driven approach leaves some roads outdated and occasionally it’ll cause you having to back-track, or ending up on dirt roads. I have fun in those moments though. :)
- Its navigation includes instructions for important Y-junctions in highways where Google Maps just assumes you’ll take the correct lane. On the flipside it’ll often tell you to “go straight” even though there seem to be no other options.
- Generally when navigating, a Google Maps blunder tends to be way more annoying than an Organic Maps blunder.
- It works without an internet connection by asking you to download the maps along your route up front. This can also be a hassle when you just want a quick result.
- Sometimes the position-tracking experiences a delay, which can cause you to miss your turns. This is annoying and I hope it will be fixed.
- Computing a route can take a few minutes depending on the distance and complexity of roads.
- It uses way more battery than Google Maps.
Now, if it wasn’t for this last point, I’d use it over Google Maps every time. But the battery consumption is so bad that I only use it if I know that I can reliably charge my phone throughout the trip.
I wasn’t able to install from the Play Store, but it’s on F-Droid too.
It’s great with navi, its also great at finding businesses, even offline.
Organic has saved my tail a few times in state parks where I didn’t have cell service. I tell everyone I know to install it just in case of emergency.
It can be more up to date, or out of date depending on the area. I pair it with Street Complete, which makes it easy to update info, or notifies you information you could provide.
All of Google’s products have been getting progressively worse under their current CEO. He’s the direct driver of their enshitification. I have had Google home speakers since they were released, along with a few other of their “smart” products; every single one of them has declined in performance. They get confused, don’t respond, can’t connect, give the totally wrong answer, glitch out, etc.
I used to be able to run my roomba by voice command without any problems. Nowadays half the time Google responds to the command, confirms it is doing the command, and then does nothing. Last night I used it to turn off the tv, which it did, but then it spontaneously turned back on after 5 seconds.
CEO/MBA malakas are (one of the reasons) why we can’t have nice things.
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.
Does it give her bad directions on one device or everywhere she is signed into Google?
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
Yep. Multiple times I have had Google maps direct me to back employee only entrances instead of the regular entrances. Sometimes it seems like Google doesn’t even recognize that the front entrance even exists.
I just took a trip and the estimated arrival time assumed I would drive 15mph over the limit without stopping the whole way.
I hate that “feature” so much. For a while it has used the speed of other’s phones for your ETA. As in, if everyone is doing 10-15 over the speed limit, you’re expected to go with the flow.
I don’t want a more accurate ETA. I want to arrive when it says I will if I follow all speed limits, and shave off a couple minutes if I am going faster than that.How come it doesn’t just know whether you tend to speed or not? Doesn’t Google know everything about everyone?
Pretty sure it does, actually. If I look up a route and my partner looks up the same route at the same time both from within our house, mine usually has about a 3-5 minute faster eta.
