Ah, you should’ve seen what we had before Google Maps — https://images.app.goo.gl/JQ5xAhP8HpZjRNby7 The map was a static image, you had to click to change zoom levels and wait for the entire page to reload, or click to move in a cardinal direction and then agonizingly wait for the page to reload. The idea you could have infinite scrolling tiles of map with a simple way to map directions that auto-completed street names parsing from a plain English search — that was basically a revelation. :) Though MapQuest did give decent directions and a nice overview of where you were going.

Before that, you had to buy a book every year to keep in a glove compartment and look up street names in an alphabetical index, then go to a page number, look for a row and column and then plot a route by flipping between many pages or having traveled there before (aka getting lost) https://images.app.goo.gl/SdS9Z1rfs3HPJJwA9

Also a Google Maps innovation—trying to accurately put street numbers on a map. You’d often know, in some books, where street numbers began and ended at intersections, but it was extra detail and was often left out or entirely wrong. Of course it’s still wrong today, but street view really changed all that.