Google Maps no longer shows user reviews of locations if you’re not logged in. It just shows the star rating. Probably for the same reason that Google Maps is not on its own domain, but the main google.com one: user tracking using google.com cookies.
Google maps is also less useful when you are signed in. I’m not 100% on this but I think instead of using their regular alg for routing to a destination, they are using AI that tries to take you the most “direct path” which has me needlessly driving through random neighborhoods instead of main roads when I use it.
It’s nasty, and more than an annoyance it really endangers drivers and residents. I had a job a few years back with a lot of driving and Google maps would route me through a random residential street with houses to switch between two main roads that run parallel. I could tell that was happening to other drivers too both commuters and work vehicles. It was really unacceptable the algorithm would route this way because the dead obvious direction should’ve been ‘left turn on to this road when you get off the freeway, right turn onto the road you want’.
Yeah it’s been really bad the last 6-12 months i reckon
love doing left-right-left-right through eight different narrow alleys to go semi-diagonally instead of making one turn on a normal road and get there quicker and easier
Google maps routing has always been bad, and has never been good. Only ever use it to find where your destination is, then make your own way there.
A lot of fishy bullshit going on with Maps lately.
I’ve noticed that Maps removed all of my negative reviews over the last few months. I can still see them on my account, but they don’t show up on the location records anymore.
I can leave reviews for places that already have good reviews, but places with mid to bad reviews seem to be frozen. This is not just the case for my grumpy-ass account but my partner’s more balanced and prolific account too.
It’s not perfect, but check out Organic Maps. It can work completely offline and is available on F-Droid.
CoMaps is a fork and continuation of the development which was stalled under Organic Maps.
Governance issues and community concerns not addressed by company shareholders stalled the development of Organic Maps for months.
The CoMaps community & non-profit project was founded by former Organic Maps contributors, based on the Organic Maps source code.
Oh, neat.
It’s been evil since it’s inception, but very handy.
