You could be planning a trip - deciding where to stay for example.

I personally have found the new google maps very frustrating and slow - I'm constantly zooming in and out. This article finally made me realize what I'm missing, and why I'm having so much trouble with it.

Google Maps is used as the tiling layer for many non-navigation web apps: FlightRadar24 for example. Or those "find us" boxes on organisations' websites. In both those examples the map is used for geospatial orientation not navigation.

A week or two ago I was trying to determine what cities were underneath a flight path. It was particularly difficult, whereas it wouldn't have posed a problem prior to these changes.

There are other uses of maps than simply traveling. It can also teach you the relative locations of things.