Google Maps no longer shows user reviews of locations if you’re not logged in. It just shows the star rating. Probably for the same reason that Google Maps is not on its own domain, but the main google.com one: user tracking using google.com cookies.
Google maps is also less useful when you are signed in. I’m not 100% on this but I think instead of using their regular alg for routing to a destination, they are using AI that tries to take you the most “direct path” which has me needlessly driving through random neighborhoods instead of main roads when I use it.
Yeah it’s been really bad the last 6-12 months i reckon
love doing left-right-left-right through eight different narrow alleys to go semi-diagonally instead of making one turn on a normal road and get there quicker and easier
It’s nasty, and more than an annoyance it really endangers drivers and residents. I had a job a few years back with a lot of driving and Google maps would route me through a random residential street with houses to switch between two main roads that run parallel. I could tell that was happening to other drivers too both commuters and work vehicles. It was really unacceptable the algorithm would route this way because the dead obvious direction should’ve been ‘left turn on to this road when you get off the freeway, right turn onto the road you want’.
Google maps routing has always been bad, and has never been good. Only ever use it to find where your destination is, then make your own way there.