This is not a feature, Google

[brynndragon]

You know how, when you make a typo in Google and it auto-redirects, it actively tells you it is doing so ("Showing results for $new_search. Search instead for $original_search")?

Google Maps does not tell you it is redirecting. At all.

It will gladly give you a completely different town than the one you asked for, and the only warning it has done so is giving the new town in tiny font underneath the street name, the same as if that's what you'd typed in. There wasn't even a "Did you mean. . . ?", much less a "Showing $different_town" or a "Could not find $original_address".

This is how I ended up in Brookline last night, having asked to go to Brighton. I am not the only person who had that problem either.

(I'd tell Google about this problem, but my Google-fu fails to tell me how to do so. Ironically enough.)

ETA: An example of this behavior: 52 Brook Street Brighton, MA 02135 - try copy-pastaing that address into Google Maps and you'll see what I'm talking about.

Comments

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

While GPS and online driving directions will eventually get you to where you're going, it won't will give you the sort of local knowledge needed to get there quickly (even if it does, someday, explain which lane you want to be in at intersections around here ;P). That skill is still very well used by ambulance drivers and the like, and furthermore is obviously a needed skill to anyone who tries to get around here. So I'm not worried about the skillset atrophying in those who need it.