[ygra]

Google can cheat a little, especially for new roads since they notice when someone is driving over it. When there was a redesign of an intersection near here, someone marked the road as completed in OSM maybe half an hour after it was opened (we have a few quite active mappers), and Google had it open about two hours later and I suspect no one changed the data directly.

[ssl-3]

Waze definitely does this[1]. As a map editor, I can mark a road segment as closed and it will stay closed for as long as I say, unless reverted by another editor or traffic is observed moving through that closed segment (based on parameters that they set).

This kind of cheating usually works extremely well, from my observation.

Anyhow, Google owns Waze and data goes back and forth between there and Google Maps. They're like two heads of the same snake, so it's implicit that the same thing also works on Google Maps.

[1]: https://www.waze.com/discuss/t/closures/374712#p-2273808-aut...