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Google Maps Gets Its Biggest Navigation Redesign In a Decade, Plus More AI (arstechnica.com) 57

Posted by BeauHD from the new-and-improved dept.
Google Maps is rolling out its biggest update in more than a decade, introducing a Gemini-powered chatbot and a new "Immersive Navigation" interface. "Ask Maps" lets users plan trips, ask questions, and refine travel suggestions conversationally within the app. "The new chatbot will be accessible via a button up near the search bar," notes Ars Technica. "You can ask it anything you're likely to find in Google Maps without jumping into another app. You can ask for directions, of course, but it can also plan out road trips and vacations from a single prompt. Ask Maps works like a chatbot, so it accepts follow-up prompts to refine and expand on its suggestions."

Meanwhile, Google is promising a "complete transformation" of the navigation experience in Maps with what they're calling "Immersive Navigation." It brings detailed 3D visuals, smarter route previews, and improved guidance powered by data from Street View and aerial imagery. "You'll see accurate overpasses, crosswalks, landmarks, and signage in the new navigation experience," reports Ars. "Google also aims to solve some of the biggest usability issues with turn-by-turn navigation in this update. [...] Immersive Navigation tries to show you more of the route as you drive, using smart zoom and transparent buildings to help you plan ahead. Voice guidance will also reference turns after the next one where appropriate."

Immersive Navigation will also highlights the tradeoffs between different route options, such as longer routes that avoid traffic or tolls. And, as you approach your destination, it will uses Street View imagery, building entrances, and parking information to help you orient yourself. The features are launching on Android and iOS first, with broader platform support coming later.
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Google Maps Gets Its Biggest Navigation Redesign In a Decade, Plus More AI More

Google Maps Gets Its Biggest Navigation Redesign In a Decade, Plus More AI

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  • "... Plus More AI" (Score:5, Funny)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Thursday March 12, 2026 @01:04PM (#66037440)

    Well, of COURSE there's "more AI". Right now, tech company leaders won't even take a dump unless it somehow involves "more AI".

    • Artificially Intelligent Enshittification is so much better than the pedestrian one we've been getting in the past decade or two!

    • Genuinely a shame maps was one of the last great hold outs :(. Now they can hallucinate a petrol station near me whilst I'm desperate for fuel from the previous hallucination that sent me the wrong way.
      • The actual map data is still the same. This is just a natural language interface.
        • I hope the map isnâ(TM)t the same. Google Maps is currently fugly and also far less effective than Apple Maps for driving. The Google voices for colours, weighting and general cartography and symbology are atrocious. Often the route blue or red is indistinguishable from surrounding roads. And yes I have normal vision.

        • That is going to be even more infuriating, knowing the data is in there but being prevented from seeing it.

          "Find me the fastest route to the statue of liberty!"

          OkAy, pLaNnInG ScEnIc RoUtE tO DeAtH vaLLeY cAlLiNg aT EveRy BURGER KING oN The WaY!!!!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dbialac ( 320955 )
      Real world situation I always run into: trying to find Spanish grocery stores. Spanish, not Mexican, not Peruvian, Spanish. Somehow, it seems to think that Spanish doesn't refer to "Spain". There's things you can't get in the US very easily unless you buy it at a grocery store that sells food from Spain.

    • Take me back to 2019 when everything was going to be blockchain.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      This is one of those few examples where AI could be useful, if it actually worked.

      In the example they give, the first direction is an improvement. The problem is that after that there is an immediate third turn that it doesn't even mention until the drive is about to make it. The way the junction is frames even hides it off screen until in the preceding turn.

  • "Hey Google, how do I get to Burger Time Cafe?"

    "To get to Tom's Cafe, take Elm street to Highway 1. Then drive 342 miles to . . "

  • Are they fixing something which ain't broke? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Vlad_the_Inhaler ( 32958 ) on Thursday March 12, 2026 @01:12PM (#66037464)

    I'd have thought there are other problems which are more important. A day or so ago in Wiesbaden (Germany) Google Maps decided a section of an Autobahn was closed, even though traffic was running normally there, at that point a number of misguided souls left the Autobahn and drove through the city to avoid the non-closed section. It took them a few hours to fix the error.

    IF traffic-running-normally THEN ignore announcements that a road is closed.

    If the road is really blocked then I'd expect barriers and signs detailing the detour. Google Maps can't read those signs but it should be able to notice that traffic has ceased to flow there.

    • Re:Are they fixing something which ain't broke? (Score:5, Informative)

      by SumDog ( 466607 ) on Thursday March 12, 2026 @01:15PM (#66037474) Homepage Journal
      In the US, traffic closures are transmitted to cars using old radio frequencies (for in-dash units without Internet access). As much as I hate Google, this may have been due to an incorrect report by your local traffic system and not Google itself.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by grimr ( 88927 )

        An in dash unit without internet access would not be using Google Maps. But you are correct, road closure reports can come from the local municipality. It can also come from users reporting it.

        Unfortunately it way easier to report a road closed than to report that it's no longer closed. They should be able to see that cars are using the "closed" road and remove the closure but they don't and roads stay "closed" on the map for long periods of time.

        • They should be able to see that cars are using the "closed" road

          If it is a user reported road then it may. If it's a government reported road then people using the road will be ignored. This is a conscious decision to avoid sending heavy traffic down a road that may be *temporarily* open, such as when road works are reconfiguring lanes. If you use the API to report a closed road then it stays marked as closed until the official report is removed.

          You can do this on your own private roads too.

    • You'd be surprised how hard it is to pull accurate road closures out of traffic data. And DOT feeds tend to suck for machine consumption.

    • Sadly, there are people who will blindly follow what their device tells them to do and not put any thought into it, not even asking themselves "does this make sense?" I know a woman who was driving to a place she'd been to many times but apparently had the GPS set to "shortest" instead of "fastest", and it directed her to get off a highway some 50 miles before she normally would. She didn't question it one bit. Arrived much later than normal. If her GPS told her to drive off a cliff, she'd point the car

    • The answer is standardized public data feeds. Maybe all the navigation companies can create a global standard format to save taxpayer money, but data feeds are going to become an important part of infrastructure somewhere in the future. It might make sense to have user-reported road hazards or issues be fed back to the public sources. Even dispatch local authorities to check on a situation if needed.

      IF traffic-running-normally THEN ignore announcements that a road is closed.

      If all the Android phones leave the road, then Google won't have enough data to decide traffic is running

      • The answer is standardized public data feeds.

        We have that. Google has that. If the road was marked as closed it was almost certainly because the local government indicated it was closed. Google doesn't unilaterally do that, they may indicate that traffic isn't moving, or may indicate a crash or hazard on the road, but road closed information gets reported via an API. A single user report can't close a road on Google. Though a significant number of such reports will eventually be actioned.

    • IF traffic-running-normally THEN ignore announcements that a road is closed.

      That wasn't a Google issue. That was working as designed. That was a government issue, road closures are announced via API. Once that is done the road is marked as closed regardless of whether there's traffic moving through there or not. You can even do it on your own private premises. The reason for this is to prevent large volumes of traffic from being sent through roadwork areas which may temporarily have traffic flowing as lanes are reconfigured. Blame the government of Hessen

      Google Maps can't read those signs but it should be able to notice that traffic has ceased to flow there.

      Quite the opposite. When tr

  • Does anyone miss... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by karmawarrior ( 311177 ) on Thursday March 12, 2026 @01:17PM (#66037484) Journal

    Does anyone miss the good old days when cryptocurrency was the fraud the techbros wanted to foist on everyone, but there at least was no practical way to integrate it into your operating system, your mapping app, you email, etc, so they couldn't ruin everything by adding cryptocurrencies to them?

    Any how, how's the open source equivalents of Google Map doing? Are they practical yet?

    • Re:Does anyone miss... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Mr. Dollar Ton ( 5495648 ) on Thursday March 12, 2026 @01:24PM (#66037498)

      I'm using openstreetmaps with one of the f-droid apps (osmand+, don't remember how I paid) that do navigation, works fine for me.

      • Re:Does anyone miss... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by q4Fry ( 1322209 ) on Thursday March 12, 2026 @02:25PM (#66037606)

        The F-Droid version is called something like OsmAnd~ and has some of the "+" features for free. I think there are some network-using "pro" features it doesn't include. Also, Google Auto doesn't work without some root fiddling because Google only trusts apps installed by its store.

        • The networked features are, I think, just to download "realtime" osmand maps.

          Somewhat superfluous, given that they publish fresh maps every month, which are free, but it is a way to show support, although I prefer to donate a few bucks now and then through the year.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by q4Fry ( 1322209 )

            You can still get delta updates as an F-Droid free user if you link your OSM account and maintain some level of map contribution within the last $time_period. Glancing at the feature matrix, [osmand.net] it might only be cloud backup that is subscription-only for an F-Droid user with an active OSM history.

            The monthly updates are probably fine for most purposes, though. It's great that you're contributing with donations, too.

    • Does anyone miss the good old days when cryptocurrency was the fraud the techbros wanted to foist on everyone, but there at least was no practical way to integrate it into your operating system, your mapping app, you email, etc, so they couldn't ruin everything by adding cryptocurrencies to them?

      Any how, how's the open source equivalents of Google Map doing? Are they practical yet?

      Yeah, ain't it funny how the tech bros decided the next big scam should be too big to not fuck up literally everything when it collapses on itself? Because when this AI bubble pops, or corrects to something reasonably adjacent to its actual possible utility, it's gonna fuck up everything from operating systems to banking, and sweep out entire sectors of the economic system all at once. I love how we never learn lessons, even from recent history. Too big to fail is now a goal, rather than a danger.

    • Er... they DID integrate it into everything, which is why AV suites and browsers had to start blocking cryptominers so your computer wouldn't cook itself.

      Remember when they expected you to pay for website access by giving CPU cycles to their cryptominers?

      • That's not really true. Some did add it to their apps, but it was the sleazy side of the tech industry that did that. Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc, did not at any point integrate cryptocurrencies into their products.

        With generative AI it's fucking everywhere. It's easier to list the companies that don't, than the companies that do.

    • Any how, how's the open source equivalents of Google Map doing? Are they practical yet?

      comaps (A fork of organic maps) is my favorite for open source maps.

    • At least, unlike crypto, AI has some practical use, even if it is over-hyped.

  • I asked it several times to help me find glue for my pizza, but it failed. I even tried to find rocks to eat, but it wouldn't give me a map.

  • Sounds good ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SpinyNorman ( 33776 ) on Thursday March 12, 2026 @02:35PM (#66037622)

    What I've often wished for, when driving, is to be able to talk to the map, to update what it's doing - I wonder if this will let me do that, and if so will it be available via CarPlay ?

    The sorts of things I'd like to say/ask are:
    - please let's make a stop at X
    - please go via the highway (H)
    - how far to the next gas station/services/etc

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jddj ( 1085169 )

      So, a common voice prompt might be:

      "No. Stop. What the fuck? NO! Don't DO that! Oh my God. I think I have a paper map in the trunk..."

    • While you have been able to do "Hey Gemini" or "Hey Google" for quite some time, BUT its bolted on Android Auto, and Android Auto is several conflicting apps with the same name behaving like different versions of a trash fire.
      This is just another update that is going to break across the 3-4 different versions of Android Auto, where they are not going to touch any of the core issues such as the app wrongly picking LOD and being too zoom trigger happy.

      I also get wanting to be able to distribute something that

    • Yes, and...
      - If I take Highway 6 to get around this traffic jam, how long will it take?
      - Use the HOV lane to get to my destination.
      - What restaurants are along my route in the next half hour? (And don't show me on a map, tell me and let me pick verbally.)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mtmra70 ( 964928 )

      Tesla offers all this, just not via voice. But it still is a lot better than Waze and Google.

  • Will it have minimal intelligence? (Score:3)

    by NaCh0 ( 6124 ) on Thursday March 12, 2026 @03:27PM (#66037736) Homepage

    Google maps loves to recommend gas stations and restaurants that I've already passed.

    I want the NEXT gas station along my route, not something 3 miles behind me.

    Currently a voice prompt of "gas stations ahead of me" isn't understood, even with an active route running.

  • Just pronounce stuff correctly cross-language (Score:3)

    by Guspaz ( 556486 ) on Thursday March 12, 2026 @04:15PM (#66037826)

    Using Google Maps (or any mapping app) in Montreal is a constant facepalm where it tries to read French names as if they were English words. There are tons of situations in the world where the native language of the driver is not the language of most street names. Is it too much to ask for it to know "I'm speaking in English but I should read all street signs in this territory in French"? There's lots of situations where you might have similar situations (tourists, expats, cities with multi-lingual populations), and using unrecognizable names for streets is a big pain.

    • Gemini is even worse at jumping between languages when speaking in my experience, but I would guess the names aren't flagged with the language in the source data either.

      Around me in the US, some random sections of highway jump from being named in English to being named in Spanish. There is no reasonable answer for why it would happen other than they aggregated a bunch of map data and didn't validate that it was all in the same language. There is not a significant Spanish speaking population in the area.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by spitzak ( 4019 )

      It's doing this on purpose. If you switch the navigation to the native language it starts pronouncing the words correctly. I think they assume it would be better to pronounce things as they think an American who does not know the language would pronounce them.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Guspaz ( 556486 )

        Then make it optional. Let me set the location name language versus the spoken language, either just as a global setting, or on a territory by territory basis. Anybody who lives in a city where the language spoken is different from the language they speak is affected (like an English-speaking person living in Montreal), but also any tourist who asks anybody for directions is going to hear street names that are completely different than Google Maps.

        As an English-speaking Quebecker, I don't recognize many of

  • When I want a map I want a map. (Score:3)

    by Fly Swatter ( 30498 ) on Thursday March 12, 2026 @06:34PM (#66038100) Homepage
    And not some map littered with retail stores or places of interest unless I turn that crap on. Also I want the map to be most of the screen and not shrunk in every direction as more advertisements and useless 'hi look at this place' crap that I never asked for.

    While I am at it, will it suck down battery faster with the new AI motivated curated navigation that I also didn't ask for?
  • I would like to see a company make overhauls optional, especially since a lot of tools developed by other companies which use Google Maps, would have to develop different systems to account for the new change. You just watch and see how many more people use the overhaul version than the previous version, to see descriptively whether that overhaul was a good idea, rather than whether some middle manager or hot new startup consultant that middle manager is sleeping with thinks an overhaul will perform.

    If a

  • I bet it's going to start reading out all the advertising markers on your route as you drive around.

  • How to turn off the AI functions in Maps

  • The update seems to be focusing to cars and driving, and skips everything else. This may make sense in US where personal cars are the primary way of transportation. But it ignores the rest of the world where people also walk, use public transport, hike and so on.

    Google AI:
    The primary reason for using Google Maps differs between the United States and Europe due to infrastructure, population density, and transportation habits. In the United States, the primary use is automobile navigation and finding local se

  • I have only one question (Score:3)

    by Zak3056 ( 69287 ) on Friday March 13, 2026 @11:40AM (#66039222) Journal

    How does the spectral wolf [xkcd.com] play into this?

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