1. Just now I was zoomed into Kuwana, Nagoya and clicked the 'restaurant' button they show at the top. It then moved to Tokyo and showed me like 3 random restaurants there. Clicked back, tried again and it showed me restaurants in London.
2. I searched for 銭湯 (public bath) while zoomed into my hotel and it zoomed out to basically the whole of Japan suggesting some random places. I KNOW there are multiple good options nearby.
3. Similar searches for supermarket or convenience store showed results 10-15 minutes away but completely hid some places really close to the hotel. This seems to be based on them having a 3/5 rating - it's a convenience store. Rating is not the issue.
This is on top of the badge spam (Google show so many badges for hotels and things that I can't even recognise my own marked locations in the quagmire) and it's tendency to zoom out to the whole country when I search for things, which is very frustrating as I almost always want to search nearby.
I have maps search and location history off, so it might be punishing me for that.
Just curious if anyone else has noticed this, as imo this is a fairly recent (last year or so) issue.
Once I'm about a half mile down my preferred route, Google will stop telling me to take a u-turn and actually update to the faster route, consistently saving 5-10 minutes (like 30% of the trip total).
I'm honestly baffled. My faster, preferred route takes less time, but maybe Google is prioritizing routes on freeways over arterial streets?
If Google won't show me the fastest routes I don't even feel inclined to use it. Do you have any other recommendations?
I'm not really sure where I sit on this, but I have to admit it's a hell of a capability. There's some big implications of this degree of control over a population.
What kills me is trying to search in an area and having it pan out or pan over to show me an ad. I think it’s their monetization that is killing UX.
Apple Maps is vastly superior to Google at this point, especially for navigation. Google Maps cycling directions always take me through some smoke-filled tunnel or weird and not very cycleable back alleys. With Apple Maps I can mostly just blindly follow the directions.
I've also had similar experiences in quite a few places in Europe and South America.
I'm sure some prefer the latter, but I find that it makes it much more likely that I will miss a light or especially a side street with only the smaller street signs on the side of the road.
Frequent alternative routes being recommended that are literally just:
-take this next exit -turn around on the highway -take the next exit -get back to where you are now
(But it only adds 7 more minutes to your trip!!)
Would love to see the bug fix report on why these meaningless alternative routes are being suggested.
I have generally been happy with google maps experience (mostly on android) here in Japan over the past several years. Other family members use it on their iPhones, and seem to prefer it to Apple maps.
Google maps on web (If I use it, it is mostly in Chrome) sometimes acts very wonky when you arrive there by link from e.g. hotel webpage, travel-agency, or similar. (so navigate to maps.google.com is preferable).
2. Is the UI in English, or in Japanese?
I have noticed a slight tendency on the web version to punish you for using Japanese terms in the English UI, and vice-versa, nothing as bad as the symptoms you are describing though.
Also it seems like you know enough Japanese to understand the difference between 銭湯 (sento) and 温泉 (onsen) - just thought I'd mention that they are not the same , just in case a translation software threw you for a loop.
3. I don't think its punishing your for having location history off, but it might punishing you for having maps-search turned off - not sure about that.
4. Since you seem security-minded, is it possible you are also disallowing cookies or other JS functionality that might be affecting the behavior of the webapp?
It's absolute garbage now, from a company apparently determined to enshittify everything they've ever touched faster and faster. Are there decent alternatives on Android? Will I have to get an iPhone?
Either your destination is available on OSMAnd, or it will be after you add it. This is also why I don't understand why people complain about their streets being wrong. Google won't give a fuck, but it's correctable on OSM within a few minutes typically.