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Absence of street names is not accidental. I wonder if the theory is that leaving them off is more likely to ensure you remain dependent on the app.

I don't know whether this actually happens, but it's an interesting thought that removing street names could indeed lead to higher engagement metrics.

When you look for them, perverse incentives abound.

These desperate antifeatures drive me crazy these days

I wasn't sure if I was imagining it but this seemed to change in the last year or so for restaurants on my phone. I used to zoom into the local area when travelling, and click the food icon to see what's around. Now it zooms out and shows a 25km radius. Useless when I want to pick up lunch within a 5 minute drive.

I have to zoom in and pan around like a bird pecking for crumbs.

At least Google has this feature. I'd like to use Apple Maps sometimes, but the search is terrible and you can't even coerce it with a feature like "search in this area".