This is just one of those “why does everything Google ever does suck so much?” posts. Nothing Of Value Inside.
Anyway, I’ve been holidaying with my Motorola Razr 2022, and I’m just rather exasperated with Google Maps — I mean, it’s not that it doesn’t work, but there’s… details… that make you go *rolls eyes*.
For instance, as seen above: You can allegedly use Google Maps on the front screen of the Razr (it’s one of those foldy phones), but the map is almost completely covered by those totally useless bits at the bottom there. The basic use case for having a map on a small screen like that is that you can glance at it while walking around in a city — you usually don’t need the full map functionality once you’re determined where you want to go. So if Google just removed all the non-mappey input elements, it would have been fine, but nope.
And it’s not that this is a totally obscure device for Google: Google owns Motorola, so you’d think they’d polish the number one app for this phone, but nope: As with all Google projects that I can think of, they’ve implemented all the difficult stuff, but they stubbornly refuse to give it that final polish that’d make it all nice and stuff.
The other problems with Google Maps is the general enshittification of the maps themselves, of course. I ⭐ a bunch of places I want to go to, and don’t really remember them all, which is why I ⭐ them. But Google Maps (on mobile) will randomly decide not to show them all until I zoom exaaactly right, and then they sometimes appear.
And I’m guessing that’s to be able to show more of the paid entries that litter the maps, like, yeah, easyGym Paris Palais Royal which I’m totally going to go to! Good targeting of the ads, Google — I’m sure easyGym Paris Palais Royal totally got their money’s worth for that ad placement! I’m gonna go gym now for the first time in my life!
Anyway.