Google Maps | App Report, Store and Ranking Data

I don't get how this has such good reviews, it keeps getting worse I feel like. I can't tell you the amount of times I've been brought to the back of a building or nowhere near the actual building or store (usually in a place with several stores, since we live in Phoenix that's generally the case wherever we go). I was driving my daughter to a park last week and it literally dropped me in the middle of a 4 lane road, and the park was about a mile away. So I pulled off, entered the park back in and tried Directions, and it was going to take me to a random neighborhood in the wrong direction, even though when you look up the park it puts the arrow right where the park actually is, so how it was completely incapable of getting you near is baffling. It continually will suggest routes that are way slower, including turning around, but misses obvious faster routes. To get to work I can take one of two main highways, during heavy times one highway is almost always faster, whereas non-busy times the other is about two minutes faster. It was almost never suggest the other highway even when the one is always completely backed up. But it will suggest really weird routes to get around the traffic that are still longer than the first route. I was just searching for restaurants and kept having to zoom in near me, and click Search this area, every time I'd select the next restaurant scanning on the bottom, the map would zoom back out to the point of showing restaurants almost an hour away. I have probably literally a thousand restaurants within 10 minutes of me, which is where I kept trying to have it search but of course, why keep the area I continually press "search this area," what's the point of even having that button? I don't know, it obviously has it's good uses but so many frustrating and annoying things just ruin it.

I use this app a lot and as a UI/UX designer, I have a few improvements I really wish would be considered. The most important pain point I have with this app is the the auto switching to a faster route. I often go out of my way to pick routes I enjoy. Then the timer pops up to switch to a faster route. Once the timer is up, if I don’t hit cancel, it changes for me. This is opposite of how it should be. If I don’t hit a button than my route should stay the same. THIS IS DANGEROUS, the route switch pop up is distracting, and not what I want, furthermore, it has often popped up in moments of lane changing and merging, if I do nothing I’m thrown off course, if I hit cancel then my attention is split. I would change this feature to only change to a faster route, if the accept button is pressed, other wise stay on the selected route. Furthermore this should only pop up at a time well before any lane changing or merging is done. Another feature of this app I would really like to see developed further is the saving and pinning feature. I have many starred places on my map and I use the star feature to track were I have traveled. I use the green flag to track where I want to go. The heart is for people I know. And the blue square is well, I don’t use it. I don’t use it because if for categories which all have the same blue square. Again all categories I make have a blue square and there isn’t any other option. So what would be the point of using it? I should be able to assign an emoji or something to different categories. Otherwise if I made a category for restaurants, and one for music venues in a city, if I looked at my map, all I would see is blue squares for these. But instead I could assign a pizza emoji or guitar emoji, and my map would be a whole lot more fun and my categorize more organized and clear.

The changes that Google has made to their maps seems to be in favor of traffic CONTROL rather than the best routes for the individual user, less options for personal control and a stronger push towards getting you to go through state toll roads when no toll roads (that are a faster option to boot) are available. I'm a longtime user of Google maps and Keen to their tactics of late. I've been wanting to get a couple of old Rand McNally road maps for a while,we're going to need them! An app should be a tool of assistance and yes,convenience,but when an app is trying to control you,it's time to boot it. This may sound crazy to some of you,but pay attention,especially to the so called "better route available" options that pop up,watch your estimated times,this option is being used to herd you like cattle for reasons other than your travel benefits and more for clearing roadways and such. And even crazier,it sure seems like a social experiment to see what kind of "order follower" you are. I've seen this with my own eyes and ears, so call me crazy,but for those of you who are intuitive and catch on to patterns quickly,see for yourself,this is the world we live in now? With all the A.I. And apps on your phone,what was a tool is using you as a tool,or so it sure seems. I think the cost of convenience has become a bit too high for me.

After a recent update of Google Maps iOS app, the Apple CarPlay gets stuck in few minutes of navigation. The whole infotainment system needs to be restarted to resume the CarPlay but again, after few minutes, the screen gets hang. Though the audio (navigation audio or music) continues but just the entire CarPlay system goes unresponsive. I have reset the Google Maps application, factory reset the car's infotainment system and even got my car checked with the car dealer! Later I found the similar complaints in the AppStore reviews of Google Maps. I also tried to connect another iPhone running iOS 15 with latest Google Maps app - and issue is reproducible. I also asked other car owners and found that not all cars have this issue but a few specific ones.

They recently updated the app and changed the method by which they allow location sharing. I used to open location sharing, select a contact, and share instantly without sending a message. Now it makes me have to send a separate text message to people in order to share my location. This makes the feature clunky and a lot less useful as a safety feature. I can no longer easily share my location to my friends when I’m traveling late at night. I now have to send separate text messages to get the info for them to track. This is a safety issue. It broke something that I used all the time to make the feature less useful. I’ll be using a different app now for location sharing.

Google maps used to be my go- to navigation guide. It was dependable and accurate. Sadly, that is no longer the case. I commute 1 hr each way to work twice a week and I use navigation to help me avoid traffic delays. Over the past few months I’ve noticed that while using Google maps I’ll get a “better route available” notification and then when selected my commute is suddenly 10+ minutes longer! I now find myself distracted because I’m constantly trying to navigate myself back to the shorter route or find a new (not highlighted) route. Hopefully this gets resolved… in the meantime I’ll be using Waze I guess.

Every. Single. Time. I google a location for something it asks if I would like to stay on the web or go to app for directions. If I stay on the web, it’s ridiculously hard to use. If I click to go to the app-it brings me to update the app every single time. (I use google maps frequently, are y’all out here doing updates everyday?). So then I need to wait to update. AND THEN, after it updates for the millionth time, it doesn’t even save what I’m looking up. So then I have to re-search the location in the Google app. It’s tedious and annoying and it’s every time I use google maps. Get it together please.