Google Maps Strikes Again

I really really hate Google Maps. This is no easy thing to admit since I'm incredibly immersed in the Google ecosystem. Recently I had to wonder if I was going to leave the Android experience for, perhaps, the Windows Lumia experience or even the Blackberry experience. Having loved both my earlier Nokia and Blackberry handsets, I would have no misgivings about going back to those particular companies. However, as I looked at their online app store offerings, I cringed. Sure they had Facebook and Twitter, music and movie apps and hosts more, they didn't have +Google+ , +Snapseed (one of my most used apps) or very many of the Google suite of apps at all. I suppose I could use more Flickr than Picasaweb/G+ Photos, Skydrive over +Google Drive  or a variety of other workarounds that give the same functionability but without the Google ecosystem.

This brings me to Maps which is by far Google's worst product. Sure, they keep adding features to the service, feature that no one but Googlites seem to actually want (rolling Places and Hotpot into the service) and adding tons of mobile features that, again, are wishlist features, not necessities. Seriously, I can search for restaurants and bars in Maps, get reviews of those places, directions and even call right from Maps, but for some reason Maps can't actually find the business I'm in when trying to tag a location and rarely gets the closet location for food or shopping correct.

And then there's trying to create a Map. I don't know anyone in the real world who uses Google Maps for anything more than setting a placemark for a "I was here" marker to share with friends, or in the case of my motorcycle riding friends, we use Google Maps to plan out routes and that's where Google Maps fails spectacularly. I've talked about it HERE and HERE in the past.

Today, I decided to open up Google Maps for the first time in more than a year to actually create a Map. Yeah, more than a year. For some reason Google likes to create a Map every time I tag or rate a location, but I'm not talking about those "maps" I'm talking about a route. My friend and I thought about killing two birds with one stone tomorrow; one, hit a chili festival in Pueblo, CO and two, take a circuitous mountain path back home to Denver to witness the fall colors.

So, naturally, I fired up Google Maps and tried to create a route. First I tried using the new Google Map Maker to create a Map, but as feature rich as that tool is it's completely useless for create a road route from Point A to Point B. So, back to "classic maps" I go.

I select my starting point, in this case, it's Pueblo, Colorado and I choose the option to create lines following the roads. And I 'draw.' I draw and at each turn I leave one of those white waypoints with a click. Follow this road this long, then turn and follow that road that long, etc. Finally I get to the edge of the screen and have to pan to the right. Click and drag? Nope. It turns the entire map blue and doesn't move a thing. Click again? Nope. Now it's creating a line off on a tangent. Try to delete that tangent? Nope, it deletes the entire line you just drew and now you have to start over.

So, I start over. Follow the same route, get to the part where I have to pan the screen and I click and drag. This time is seems to work, but you can only drag so far before your cursor is off the screen and you have to click and drag. So, I head back, click and drag... nope. Now the entire screen is blue again, no dragging, and when I try it again, another tangent off into the forests of Colorado. Try to delete that short 3 inch segment and the entire route is gone again.

Fuck!

So, I start over. This time at each junction I stop the route, click it as finished (which is clicking the little white waylay point thing twice) and then start a new segment. Why?

This is incredibly inefficient. I can't put a start point where an end point is, but instead I have to place it next to the end point. Sure, if I'm zoomed into street level view that might not be too bad (except for all the panning which results in the above fiascos), but if I'm looking at a quarter of the state then I'm actually setting the waylay marker tens or even a hundred feet apart. Then I have to draw a new line and do this all over again: start the line, follow the roads, click for a turn and find a stopping point. Double click it to an end. Start a new one. Stop it. Start a new one and so forth. Over and over and over again.

It takes hours to create a map that would only take a few moments to actually trace out in ink on an actual map.

If I'm creating a neighborhood map this wouldn't be too big of a deal, but drawing a route through a major city such as Denver or worse yet across the state or region this is incredibly cumbersome and frustrating. And then to have one little thing go wrong, such as Google choosing to follow the wrong route, or even a more frustrating maneuver, when the lines change on their own to the "shortest route" or whatever it's chooses. Sometimes the route "follow the roads" chooses are tens of miles outside of the route I want and then I have to go back and change it. If I click (because I have to pan, or gods forbid I sneeze) and suddenly that route is my route and the only way to change it is to delete and start over.

I just want to draw a friggin map!! I don't want Google to do shit for me, I want to draw my own route. You know, sometimes I don't want the shortest route, such as when finding a motorcycle route, or mapping out a path to my camping location so friends can find it, or going on a scenic drive instead of a direct route home.

What is wrong with Google Maps? At this rate I'd rather just get my Rand MacNally out of the garage and put it on my passenger seat instead of relying on Google Maps to do anything at all. It is by far Google's least consumer friendly tool and Google has a lot of less than friendly products.