Getting Around With Google Maps Navigation

I love Google Maps Navigation and I specifically like the fact that it functions as an assistant, not a boss. When you are driving around and change your route, it assumes you are doing it for a reason and continually recalculates your course.

Other systems panic when you go off the pre-determined track. They start screaming at you to make a U-turn and get back on the original route.

But lately, the Google software has been shoddy. On a recent excursion, Google did not take me to the exact address, but rather the backside of the exact address. It wasn't an alley per se, but it may as well have been. There was no reason that it could not have led me to the front instead. I had to punch in the instructions a couple of times to get the thing to take me there.

The navigation will also reconfigure the routing if you consistently go a different way. To get to my house, for example, it is not obvious to the software that it's faster to make a U-turn on a certain street than to whip around to the desired street. It's a better route but the system did not see a gratuitous U-turn as any sort of routing, until yesterday when, out of the blue, I was directed to make the U-turn I always make anyway.

Now, as an aside, I do not normally use the navigation to find my way home. I usually use it to get home when I am on some city streets on the San Francisco peninsula and need to find the fastest way to the freeway. Sometimes I just leave it running for the rest of the trip. Thus, I discovered that the navigator changed the routing that involved the U-turn.

This fix, funny enough, dropped me in front of my neighbor's place. It never did that before.

It's apparent that the Google Maps Navigation is a tool that learns and it has to compete with Waze, which almost everyone but me loves because it shows you speed traps, among other things. But I'll save my carping about Waze for another column.

In the process of trying to compete with Waze, Google is actually losing ground. For example, in earlier versions of the navigation system, you'd get a message at the end of your trip asking if the destination was correct. I have not seen this message for at least a year. It was handy because at least twice within recent memory, I was directed to the wrong location, including the back door routing.

I have to assume that people clicking "no" when they meant "yes" or "yes" when they meant "no" began to accumulate and became useless data. But how will Google ever find out that the routing was bogus? Short of turning on the mic remotely and hearing someone cussing at the software, I cannot see how this information will ever be collected.

Another problem that I am starting to have with it is that it seems to have stopped directing me around traffic jams. A couple of years back, it would send me through the streets of Tacoma to bypass a freeway tangle. It never does that anymore. It just runs me straight into the traffic snarl and leaves me there. Was this the result of people complaining about the rerouting? Waze is apparently dodging jams.

While Google talks a lot about its Android releases, Chrome, and various apps, it tends to be silent about the navigation system. I have never heard the company brag about it or send out updates to highlight new features. This is also true its Web-based cousin.

For example, there is a feature on Google Maps that gives you a 3D drive simulation when you click on a small icon that is nearly impossible to find. How long has this been there? A year? Forever? Since last week? Who knows.

I suppose that since Google puts all its code into a perpetual "beta" state, the company can just futz around forever. And apparently, that's exactly what it is doing. I guess the users will just have to put up with the never-ending changes, whether positive or negative. I wish the company would let the users vote on which to use and which to discard. But that seems unlikely.

You can Follow John C. Dvorak on Twitter @therealdvorak.

More John C. Dvorak:

Go off-topic with John C. Dvorak.