My biggest gripe about GMaps is a minor one but when it happens it's crucial:

Sometimes I'll see a road that looks like it may be a good shortcut or something, but it doesn't show the name. So I zoom in, and in, even to the point that the road itself is taking up my entire phone screen. Still no name! Very tedious and aggravating when it's on the fly.

Yes this is infuriating. The old google maps was excellent at adding street labels everywhere using just the font size and layout. It was more on par with his traditional paper maps used to be designed. Maximize the information for the user. Nowadays online maps are no longer thought to be used as traditional maps in the sense of using them as a tool to explore / navigate. Now they’re 100% focused on giving you directions. Make it easy to understand the directions, suppress other useless detail because all you need to focus on is the next turn.

This change happened around 2018. Super infuriating that Google made the map less useful for manual navigation.

In which country do you see ads in Google Maps? My Swiss phone (a Samsung) doesn't show anything of sorts.

United States, they highlight retailers or restaurants on the map that are paying for ads alongside other large landmarks.

Yep. This is increasingly pushing me away from Google Maps. Once offline mode comes to Apple, I'll move over completely ...just wish i could bring all my saved locations over.

I'm using the iOS 17 beta so not sure if it is only on 17 or works on 16 also, but you can download parts of the map on the Apple Maps app now

Not only that, but if one of your turns is adjacent to, say, a corner with a McDonald's that's on the map, the direction narration will actually say something like "In 1000 feet, turn right, past the McDonald's on the right." It's so blatant and makes me laugh.

I never stop, FWIW.

The United States definitely has ads/promotions on the map.

There are ads on Google Maps in Switzerland. Example:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Pfister+Z%C3%BCrich+Letzip...

Scroll around Zürich and you should see several.

> Google Maps advertisements on the map.

Ad company puts ad on product. News at 11. =)