> Much worse at text parsing e.g. I can no longer loosely type something like "10th and grove to Jim's Hardware" and get directions. In fact most of the time I can't even type in a major intersection and get what I'm looking for.

That's the part I don't get. Google is all about search. Their main engine is so good it's creepy. and yet, for me, it is unable to parse a perfectly well formed street address, written as recommended by the postal services.

I know it is a hard problem, but that's Google we are talking about. I also live in France (i.e. not the US) but our street addresses are not so different, and Google has a presence and generally works well here.

For example search something like "building X, 123 street, postal code, city" next to your current location and it will find a shop called X on the other side of the country. Search "123 street, postal code, city" and it will find exactly what you want, to the letter. Why? Is it that hard to throw off a small bit of information to perfectly match everything else instead of searching for an insignificant random detail? Probably harder that it looks but if there is one nontrivial thing Google can do, that's it.