Sometimes it's even inconsequent, like you see something, zoom in to look at the streets, zoom out, it's gone... then you can't see it again until you zoom max..
Step 1: Surveil the ever-loving shit out of everyone and everything you can
Step 2: Pimp out (via RTB) anyone wandering by to advertisers who want to take a crack at them
Step 3: Profit
This plays into Step 1. If someone even thinks about going somewhere, Google insists on knowing where. Bitch better have my money!
Not showing the street names is a problem. Filtering out business I know exist and that I know they have is a problem. Bakeries, bars, coffee places, etc. They have them all. But not on the map. And it's not like there is a lot of other content competing for attention when fully zoomed in. I live in the middle of Berlin, not in a freaking desert.
Only when I search for them do they show up. Showing me nothing where I know they have stuff is a choice. A bad one. It's all form over function lately at Google. Lipstick on a pig. And it doesn't even look that good. Hating the bright greens particularly. Fugly as hell. But Apple does it so it must be good. I guess imitation is a form of flattery. Or desperation. Or something. But it's definitely imitation.
It indeed looks like nobody is in charge, as Ian Hickson suggested in the article that was on HN last week when he left Google after 16 years. Indecisiveness and a lack of leadership are on full display here. Nobody calling BS on this is a problem. Leadership allowing this out of the door, or worse, insisting it is released in this form, is a problem. I guess somebody needed their Christmas bonus so they shipped "something" and forced it through. Just speculating here but corporate stupidity tends to work like that. It's not hard to make an educated guess at the multiple levels of mundane stupidity at play here from the outside. Because I've seen it from the inside in other companies.
That's the goal. You're assuming their metrics are tied into being a 'map' or 'useful to end users', but this is Google. Their metrics are 100% focused on ad revenue. They want you to see people who have paid to be included, and they want to force you to rely on their search (which they control) rather than being able to organically find new places.
For example we can imagine that if a user usually uses it on the phone, at night in the city, on foot, often searching for restaurants, it might default to showing more restaurant venues without the user initially searching for it if the user is in the city at night. There's a blog post they made about it several years ago from what I recall it was something like "if you look for fast food it will show other fast food venues"
Maybe I'm just being cynical but my pet conspiracy is that in order to make the map space marketable it needs to get worse first so companies are "encouraged" to pay for the privilege.
It would fit in with Googles business model.
If someone could, that would be very troubling for google.
Business wise speaking, it seems that Google is aware that the clock is ticking for several of their offerings. This is even beyond the antitrust case. Microsoft Bing finds stuff that Google doesn't. Something impossible to think a few years ago.