What Google's doing is harder and more nuanced -- they want to accurately capture the world as it exists around you right now. That means understanding what parts of the world around you you care about and understanding what level of accuracy (as opposed to promptness of updates) they should optimize for. Given Maps' extraordinary success as a product, they've done this quite well. But, yes, it has failure modes that users should be aware of and that Google tries to combat without compromising the main goal.