My best friend bought a house. She noticed within the first month that the name of the road she lived on was misspelled in Google Maps. Specifically, it's a slightly unusual spelling of the road name. Like "Chickorie" vs "Chickory". It's particularly annoying because there's a road the next town over with the traditional spelling. It doesn't even share address numbers, but Google Maps still frequently misdirects people.

It's correct everywhere else. The road sign, the municipal tax parcel GIS, the post office, Apple Maps, MapQuest, OpenStreetMaps. All of them had the correct name, except Google Maps. So she reported it through Google Maps. And reported it. And reported it. Every few months she reports it again. She's asked friends to report it as well.

It's still wrong.

She bought her house in 2015.

It’s doing a great job making sure I know where Burger King is when zooming into a city

It is still drawing bike lane networks in cemeteries and random bits of grass and pavement. So no. The way I see it is is actually worse than it was in 2006. When I opened it today it asked me if I would like to see Dua Lipa's recommended restaurants.

odds of a given street being labeled on gmaps for android still feels like 50/50 unless you get the zoom exactly right

Not relative to its available resources. For example, there's still no option to penalize intersections. I'm still getting absurd side-street routes and unprotected lefts/crossings to save 1 minute on a 20-minute trip.

It's been up and down for about 8-12 years. Problems get fixed and new ones get added without a particular direction, at least that's what it feels like as a regular user. Some come back years after they were first fixed.

Id say it improved until about 2016, since then the additions have generally made the software worse.

More overlays and popups More needlessly verbose navigation instructions Less predictable routes.

Thats just the start

Maps peaked after Google acquired Waze in 2013 and integrated the data. Since then they've added worthless annoying social features and more advertising.

Apple Maps has been better than Google Maps for at least 10 years and nowadays the way that Google Maps improves is often just by copying Apple Maps

Google has said to turn right at an intersection where you are turning left for years because it doesn't know about a T shaped intersection that tens of thousands use a day.

Maps thinks it's fine to do a u-turn on the Sydney harbour bridge.

Google: HOW ABOUT SOME AI ON IT?!? You know you want it.

Lmao