I know it's slightly off topic, but your comment "... the new iteration of Google Maps is proof IMO that they're not a great at products." I'm curious as to what you don't like about the new Google Maps? Personally, I think that while it took a little bit to get used to, it's great and works way better than before. I'm just curious to hear your two cents on what you don't like about the new maps. Thanks!

Here are some of my personal rants on the new interface.

I hate how it zooms on every single search. Before, it would only move the map when your search result wasn't visible on the current map. If I'm searching for something, 90% of the time it's in my area and I want to know where it is relative to everything else. Now I always have to zoom out to get context (and they keep moving zoom UI element around--it's gone from top-right, to top-left, to bottom-right).

I cannot figure out how to use street view anymore. Looking at it now, I can kind of access it next to photos of a venue, but many times the venue is on a street corner or down an unmapped alley so you don't get to choose where you're looking from. They no longer show you what is mapped and what isn't and you cannot change your view from a top-down map. Last week I was searching near two similar street names (foo ave and foo st, for example). The one I wanted wasn't mapped and it snapped me to the other street, but I didn't know this.

They added a loading screen to the main page. Before you'd see tiles as they'd load, now you see a grey screen and the whole map fades in. This is terrible if you have a spotty connection. It also takes you longer to orient yourself since you can't see any landmarks until the entire page completely loads. Thankfully there still is progressive loading when panning/zooming (which, I think, was one of Google Maps original killer features).

I'm more than happy to elaborate.

Web Client: First of all, I hate how control are at 4 opposite corners of the screen. On any screen size it now takes longer to go from one control to another. I used to be able to zoom down all the way to street view. Now I have to click on a spot and hope that the street view option comes on. I used to be able to right click and search nearby. Now when I search in an area and want to see a list of results and I can't change the search area without going back and forth. It's one thing to change the aesthetics and move features around. But to completely remove features is really annoying.

Mobile client: My use case is when I'm in motion. I want to see where I'm at currently. It always shows where you last were before it fetches a GPS signal. Sometimes, it even shows me moving in the opposite direction at my old location before it finally updates and animates to my location. This leads to confusion while I'm driving or walking. The animation is really annoying because sometimes I'm super far from my previous location and I have to wait for the app to animate to my position and on top of that zoom down to a default zoom level which should never be assumed because different zoom levels have different contexts and this assumes a default.

When I do searches for anything, it automatically zooms to the top hit. I always have to zoom out or even stop it while it's mid-zoom. They've removed tons of features like layers, seeing things along the way during navigation (useful for gas stations along the way home), etc. For the mobile client, I can really go on forever.

There was nothing wrong w/ the old maps looks wise. Yes, the new maps "looks" nicer but it's actually frustrating to use and I'm sad to see a lot of features go.

(not op)

It's half and half for me. On the one hand it look awesome and many thing became easier to do. Like finding a route.

On the other hand it feels a bit like an Apple product to me. The old maps was more intuitive, now it's as if they want me to do things exactly the way they planned it and every other way is wrong.