I too enjoyed the side bar. It's mysterious but it made me feel like there was more real estate. The map wasn't covered with boxes, whereas in the new design the 40% left handside of the map is unusable. Also, when searching a place, it resets the zoom, it zooms until I see the inside of that place (such as, the city center), whereas I generally want to see where the city is located with a bit more context. Same for a path: it puts the origin and destination on the viewport edges, whereas I generally want to locate the route, therefore see slightly more context. Slightly enough that it's painful.