It's amazing to me how much these companies spend on redesigns that add nothing but rounded corners one year, then sharp corners next year, and so on...
A friend of mine worked for a FAANG company and he taught me that people get promoted for creating something "new" rather than improving something that already exists.
It's busy work to justify a lot of positions. Think how many people are needed even for a minor change like that in an organization as large and bloated as google
I literally can't even tell the difference between the first set of pictures other than the new one looks like it has an added advertisement on the center panel.
Fuck Google Maps. I've been requesting to fix my road for 6 months now (new house I just purchased this year). They refuse. So now any website that uses google apis to validate addresses fucks me over. My road turns from "<road> Drive" to "<road> Court" at a junction with another road. Google maps just calls the whole road "Drive".
The road signs even show up in street view. And the other roads around me that have the same structure are all correct.
It's mapped properly in every other database outside of google (including Waze which is now owned by Google). But I can't make websites not use Google's database for address validation. I don't use google maps personally.
For daily use, if you want something that uses the same data as OSM but has a Google Maps like experience, use Organic Maps instead. Its really good and very modern. Its also completely offline so it works without an internet connection. Slight warning though, it uses a cache of open streetmaps and not realtime data - this gets updated once a month.