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Is it really faster though?

All you have now is two routes with a roughly equal amount of traffic on.

One of those routes will be a massive detour.

How do you know those routes have a roughly equal amounts of traffic? Or that there’s only two routes? I usually see at least three possible routes with my commute (with some forking), and at least one shortcut. During heavy traffic one optimized route can at least save 10-15 minutes than the slower one(s).

It's really unlikely that you're saving any time at all.

And you know this how

This just isn't true. You're assuming the conclusion and saying the routes will have equal amounts of traffic and that one will be way longer and that it's unlikely you're saving time. Except people that have experience with Google Maps have watched it flag upcoming traffic congestion and explicitly reroute you and ask you to confirm and show the time difference. That's the real-time aspect, but it can also project forward in time and estimate what the traffic along routes will be at the time you want to travel, so it's also an important planning tool.

I have no idea why it's contentious that having nationwide surveillance of traffic patterns would result in better routing decisions.

Unfortunately, accidents are quasi commonplace among my commute.

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