The POI icons are huge. The text for obvious things ("New York City" when I'm staring at just Manhattan) is huge and unnecessary. There are too many shown at the street level. Every block has restaurants and bus stops. They're not labeled, just taking up a huge amount of space.

It feels like an old linux desktop, before they got usable.

The map is covered in visual clutter that takes too much effort to visually process.

I agree that Google Maps needs more street names, but that's my only complaint about the map. That's an easy fix.

Mapbox Streets is an example of good map design: https://www.mapbox.com/maps/streets/

Hmm, doesn't show forests and doesn't show built-up areas, either, which are precisely the things I really dislike about Google's map design, too.