[TeMPOraL]

Disagree. A navigational aid such as Google Maps is only good as long as you know your exact destination in advance. If for some reason you can't, or you need to orient yourself in an area, or even understand the route you're on, or - God forbid - plan a trip involving multiple destinations - Google Maps is incredibly hard to use.

[falcor84]

I'm not quite sure what you mean; I've been quite happy with Google Maps's support for multiple stops. And as for the other thing: "If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there".

[TeMPOraL]

What I mean is, it's nice if you input the exact location or locations that you want to visit. It sucks when you're trying to plan a trip - exploring what's in the area, possible routes there. At that stage, you may not have any concrete stop in mind, you're just trying to tentatively evaluate options. Google Map's interface makes this task very hard. It also sucks when you're trying to orient yourself - i.e. understand what the map shows in relation to where you stand. In particular, the way it goes out of its way to hide street names is very annoying.

The latter two use cases are exactly what a map is supposed to be for. Hence, Google Maps suck at being a map.