>The thing with Google Maps was that it was actually reasonably good and intuitive on mobile until sometime 5 or 7 years ago when someone (probably a UX designer : ) decided it had to be simplified.
All Google stuff ended up doing this when they started trying to standardize their "design language" across their services. They developed a very annoying habit of hiding every useful function or bit of relevant contextual information inside a poorly marked hamburger menu somewhere. It's extremely annoying from a discoverability perspective and I strongly suspect any UX designers involved lost a lot of arguments for a decision like that to get codified.
All Google stuff ended up doing this when they started trying to standardize their "design language" across their services. They developed a very annoying habit of hiding every useful function or bit of relevant contextual information inside a poorly marked hamburger menu somewhere. It's extremely annoying from a discoverability perspective and I strongly suspect any UX designers involved lost a lot of arguments for a decision like that to get codified.