Yeah, but it brings you past this commercial zone where a number of chains and franchises pay Google a lot of advertising money.
This one. Google isn’t free. It’s augmented reality advertising.
The most generous guess is that it is doing some exploratory investigation of how long the other paths are currently taking. For any navigation app to be very accurate for most users, it needs to be very inaccurate for some users. It won’t know that taking this 30 minute detour is worth taking without someone taking that detour and another person sitting through the traffic that made the detour worthwhile. And since traffic changes over time, it would need to continually do that exploration.
Though it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s not the only factor and that there’s some enshitification going on on top of this. One guess in that angle: a special secret VIP mode where people who have given Google a lot of money get people directed away from their route.
Fun points. I don’t trust google or crapple or microsoft(bill gates in bed).
Someone in my family was briefly obsessed with the idea that Google had a habit of gathering information by treating its own users as guinea pigs. Sending users on routes that would help Google gather traffic flow information, rather than routes that made the best use of users’ time.
As far as I know, that was an internet rumor, not the result of evidence or investigation. But it’s the kind of allegation that’s pretty much impossible to disprove.
It is 100% confirmed that Google will route traffic outside of communities if community leaders request it. The famous example was the wealthy neighborhood that had a great view of the famous “Hollywood” sign who got annoyed at tourists being directed there to admire it.
Apologies but this Daily Mail article is the best I can find. It was back in 2014 and by now most of the other coverage is either behind a paywall or sites that no longer exist.
AFAIK Google does “spread” routes a bit if sufficient, close-enough alternatives exist. That helps reduce congestion, which at a large enough scale does help users to reach their destination faster than if they all took the “fastest” route.
Would it be a surprise? How would it gather traffic data if they don’t send a few cars down an unpopular path? Not saying it is right.
I stopped trusting it when I drove to north Carolina and it had me get off 40 to take some backwater road that went through several small towns and actually made the trip longer and used more fuel.
It tried to do it on the same route a different day. I ignored it and the trip time decreased by 20 min when I skipped that part of the route and just stayed on 40.
How would it gather traffic data if they don’t send a few cars down an unpopular path?
If there’s no cars there, there’s no traffic data to collect. If there are already cars there, just use their data. Google doesn’t just use maps to gather it. There’s not much point in sending someone on an arbitrary detour for the hell of it.
Google does seem to often overestimate the practicality of the more rural routes, often pretending you can always stick to the speed limit there when the actual road would not be safe at those speeds. Plus more crossings, bends etc… slowing you down. Or maybe that day Google figured there was a traffic jam on 40.
Every time I visit my family in Wales Google tries to take me away from the perfectly reliable A55 and onto some ungodly assemblage of extremely narrow country roads and tenuous mountain passes. Sometimes it offers them to me but I’ve caught it secretly changing my precalculated route without my input. Unfortunately I’ve tried several alternatives (various osm apps, here wego) and the only real alternative is Waze… which is owned by Google. We are nothing but cattle to them. I think Google is trying to kill me.
Ive been given routes miles out of my way because google wants to put me on the turnpike.
Or, it’s faster but you need to zigzag through residential streets and eventually make dangerous left turns into traffic without a light or stop sign to stop the heavy traffic in both directions.
Oops, it took too long to turn so it’s no longer faster-- why didn’t you just stay in the main boulevard? Silly human.
Always check no tolls. It’ll always recommend the toll, unless there is an accident or major traffic disruption, even if it only saves 1 min. Rarely are tolls worth it outside peak hour.
One time I was making my way home, about a 4 hour drive, and set it in google maps. I had forgot to turn off tolls,and started driving. It was a real surprise when I ended up at a ferry to cross Lake Michigan. I dont think they took cars, and it was 11pm anyway so they were closed. Thanks google! Idk how thats supposed to help when the ferry is scheduled for every couple hours. Who would even want that option? It didnt save any time unless you could hop on a ferry as soon as you got there.
I wish there was a way to set how much I value my time and every extra mile driven, so that it would select only those tolls that are a good trade-off.
I wish there was a quicker toggle for tolls. I frequently do a drive that would take an extra 3-4 hours without tolls, so having to switch it on and off is a pain.
In my neck of the woods, the toll road is often much smoother. Compared to the overall costs of owning a car, road tolls in the US are almost nothing, unless you’re racking them up every day.
Bro it takes for ever to take the slow, winding back roads instead of the toll road
There’s been plenty of times I’ve chosen an extra five minutes to take mostly interstate with tolls over surface streets: it’s vastly safer.
Except when it’s not, and there’s suddenly a miles-long parking lot just sitting there for an hour plus.
Google Maps have gotten quite a lot worse over tgr last few years. I have tried various alternatives but none function properly. Live traffic routing is a big problem for alternatives. I have tried Magic Earth and Nunav but had to revert back to Google Maps in both cases.
What about Waze? I think it’s okay just Google maps with extra steps and less routes to choose from.
Waze is literally just Google Maps with different route settings.
Live traffic routing is hard to do when you aren’t installed on every device by default and using google’s invasive services to get ya position
Controversial opinion: Apple Maps has far superior navigation currently. As in it will actually give correct lane guidance and haven’t directed me to the wrong place yet (Google Maps suggested the wrong ferry terminal recently, lol)
Also tried a few alternatives but a lot of the free apps have given the same strange directions as Google, or missed important shit like one way road directions.
So many here are so happily accepting the very concept of a toll road, it’s kind of gross.
would you rather have general taxes be higher? someone has to pay for road upkeep.
in my state we refuse to raise the gas tax, so tolls go up, registration fees, etc.
we had a law that pegged the gas tax to inflation, and a ballot measure removed it, because the citizens are idiots. so now we all pay like double our registration fees.
Yes. Higher taxes for the rich are always the answer. They alone can afford to cover the costs. For anyone making $1 mil/yr USD or less, your taxes from all sources should be $0. The lowest paid citizens are the hardest workers; we deserve a break.
1 million is too high. Start at 250K as the lowest taxed (not counting below that which is zero) and it goes up proportionally from there. And no cap in it either, if someone makes a trillion their tax should be over 100%.
would you rather have general taxes be higher?
Yes. Our toll roads in Oklahoma are in terrible shape and are expensive to use.
me too, but 80% of my fellow citizens don’t agree. they think taxes are too high and want them lower.
but also we need to spend more on schools, infrastucture, etc…
almost like they can’t do basic math…
Most of them barely pay taxes as it is.
Higher taxes or having to stop and queue every couple of kilometers?
Higher taxes obviously, my time is worth a lot more.
huh, where do you live? tolls are all automatic at full speed now. and have been so for well over a decade.
last time i had to stop for toll booth was probably 2010, and even back then they already had a automated lane, but it was 20mph, not 65+
They don’t do it like that where I live anymore. There are transponders you can get to pay for tolls automatically or they send you a bill based on your license plate with overhead traffic cameras and receivers that don’t affect traffic in any way. They’ve been doing this for over a decade, well before modern license plate readers. It’s obviously a little grosser now , knowing how these types of cameras are oppressive, but at this point, I think they’re at the toll booths anyway, so the only thing you’re saving by going for old fashioned toll booths is a dangerous, physically harmful job.
And we can assume all those roads with the privately owned toll booths are in perfect upkeep? Pay that toll like a good corporate citizen, hard work is its own reward, etc etc ad nauseum.
why do you think it’s gross?
Not OC but I agree with him. Where I live, the toll roads are owned by private corporations, some of them entirely foreign owned corporations, and the rates are obscenely high. It isn’t about maintaining the road; instead it is about rent seeking behavior and maximizing shareholder profits. That is abhorrent to me. Public goods should be owned by the public.
Ameicans want good roads but don’t want to pay taxes or tolls to keep them maintained.
We already pay the taxes. Tolls are on top of that to private corporations and that money is kept not used for road repair. Don’t talk about things you don’t know.
In most countries, every highway is a toll road instead of taxing fuel. Though an increasing number use a prepaid vignette or plate based mail billing instead, not actual physical tool booths like we’re in the 80s.
In the US it’s both, making toll roads extortion.
Google maps has taken to routing me onto unsafe roads for walking and biking instead of available trails which are 1000x safer. They removed the “beta” marker long ago but it was shit like that they were concerned about getting sued for. Instead of focusing on fixing shit like that they were busy monetizing and only removed the beta marker once they realized they were legally invincible.
In any case, alternate routes are only faster for the first three people who use them. After that you are no worse off in the first traffic jam than in the alternate traffic jam.
Do people actually read books like that?
They literally buy books like they do any other decoration. They have someone build a bookshelf, then buy enough footage of books to fill it, matching the style of the room.
Classic room = classic style books
Modern room = modern style books
They’ve never been removed from the shelf, because it’s decoration, not literature.
No, most people open them up and scan the text with their eyes, not drink them.
those are definitely fake rich people books that a decorator bought for the aesthetic and probably chopped them in half to make them sit at the right depth on the shelf
You still do Google maps?
No but someone on reddit did and they reposted as usual.
