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?
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.
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.
Lolwut? Didn’t realise they were serving ads on maps too, that’s hectic
You know how you can see pinned restaurants with their name and a fork and knife icon? Businesses can pay to show their full logo and get priority in search results/what shows first on the map as you zoom in.
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
The search results are inconsistent and they started including advertising on the map but I haven’t noticed a decline in route finding. Perhaps there were accidents or traffic jams being routed around?
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 and 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.
Time to switch Gmaps to Organic Maps or Osmand. Both free and with offline navigation.
Google has sent me through toll roads multiple times with avoid toll roads enabled.
I have a cheap iphone just for apple maps which hasn’t fucked me over … yet
I am always an “avoid tolls” kind of person. I use Google maps a lot and have never had an issue with this.
But just the other week, I was coming back from a road trip and it kept trying to make me use a rolled expressway!! Wtf!! I even triple checked my settings. I don’t understand wtf is up with that
Just avoid Australia, you’ll be fine.
But Doctor, I Am Pagliaccidespite living here believe me I try
I’ve been getting weird walking instructions. Like 6 min walk is +30 to avoid some invisible barrier.
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.
Organic Maps and OsmAnd is better.
Ive used those and their routing is not even close to Google maps
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!
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.
I’d day 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
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?
That would be super awesome if navigation apps had profiles.
Like, when I’m driving my car I go the speed of traffic or maybe a little fast.
And when I’m driving my motorhome I go 65mph tops and really slow up hills.
But totally nobody does this. Even the RV Trip Wizard app (built around Here navigation) makes you choose between “I drive XXX speed on average” (ignoring actual speed limits and conditions, just assume constant speed) or just assume normal traffic.
Why can’t they recognize that different drivers drive differently???
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.
I’ve actually been having more trouble with Apple Maps lately.
My last trip was to perform at a country fair type thing and it couldn’t locate the venue. So I thought maybe if I put on the satellite view, I could spot it and drop a pin? But the whole area was behind a cloud. Wow.
Then later, when we were returning, it tried to send me on a shortcut through a mall parking into an overgrown field.
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
