Maps may have had lots of improvements but they keep relentlessly cramming more and more ads and sponsored content into it. I now actively avoid using it as much as possible.

Which is directly relevant to the topic being discussed here. Engineers work hard to make real improvements but the product as a whole is sabotaged with the never ending pressure to monetize more.

Not going to be mild here, Google Maps is the absolute poster child of enshittification. Sorry if you've worked on it, it's even more enshittified than search, and the best example of the company being run by the Ads division.

This overview 8 years old but it's only gotten worse [1]. Everything in the UI has been optimized purely for businesses and ads, not for users. I'm blessed enough to now live in one of the few countries where Google Maps is not dominant, where local players are more popular.

I've gone and taken current screenshots of both to show the difference. Current Google Maps [2]. Note how you can't even hide those UI elements blocking the map, but more important is the map itself. Current locally popular maps app [3]. It.. actually works well as a map, like Google Maps used to before Ads took over the business. And just a single touch on the map to hide the UI.

I'm sure the Supernova Hotel and Hostel Ani & Haakien are bringing Google some great cash money though, splendid user feature!

Before I lived here, I of course used Google Maps. And when I go abroad, I have to use it. And every single second spent with it is a stark reminder of how much worse it is than the map apps that are most popular here and are not enshittified.

[1] https://www.justinobeirne.com/what-happened-to-google-maps

[2] https://www.directupload.eu/file/d/8755/pn47kkvj_png.htm

[3] https://www.directupload.eu/file/d/8755/ruwp2jy7_png.htm

Some of that stuff is impressive, but I think you might be stretching a bit with lyrics and calculator. They're nice quality of life improvements, but I don't think I'd classify them as "impressive".

Docs and Sheets are still so much better than Word and Excel, except that there doesn't seem to be a way to, from the desktop, launch a .csv into Sheets (or .doc into Word).

Though I think that, for every minor improvement, I could name a regression or product shut-down.

Sorry no: maps has gotten way worse for my use cases. On mobile, they started agressively trying to get you to use the app instead of browser and try to get you to turn on your location constantly. They also kneecapped the "near to here" query button when looking at an adress on the mobile browser, where you need to try to use a roundabout hack to get it sort of working. Constantly enshittifying the mobile browser in favor of the app is not a bargain with the devil I'm willing to accept.

Calculator and currency conversion were in Google search before 2009.