Repeatedly searching and dropping pins in Google Maps is like eating your dinner by pulping it and drinking through a straw.
Studying a map ahead of time and marking it up (on the map itself, as we did with paper maps and dry-erase or permanent markers) is a more efficient interface. There's this forgotten principle in UI that users can mentally filter out noise and focus on relevant parts very good; that's what our sense of sight is optimized for. Having to actively search whenever you need to know something is an inferior experience, both in terms of efficiency and because of missing context.
(Also, dropping permanent pins is AFAIK impossible in the Google Maps proper; it's a feature of "my maps", which is hidden somewhere and has weird interactions with Google Maps.)
> Repeatedly searching and dropping pins in Google Maps is like eating your dinner by pulping it and drinking through a straw.
You are thinking about it as a synchronous workflow. Study map->create a plan->execute a plan. This workflow was the only workflow because it was impossible to execute a search when needed.
Google maps is optimized for a modern workflow. "I'm here. I need X. How do I get there?" With pins that workflow is asynchronous.
For example, I use pins for restaurants. I find/read something about a place I want to try at some point. I drop pins. Next time when I happened to be in the area I see the pins that I dropped. It may happened to tomorrow or three months from now. My alternative is yelp with its sync workflow - search and analyze results of a search or rely on my memory of what place should be around where.
Studying a map ahead of time and marking it up (on the map itself, as we did with paper maps and dry-erase or permanent markers) is a more efficient interface. There's this forgotten principle in UI that users can mentally filter out noise and focus on relevant parts very good; that's what our sense of sight is optimized for. Having to actively search whenever you need to know something is an inferior experience, both in terms of efficiency and because of missing context.
(Also, dropping permanent pins is AFAIK impossible in the Google Maps proper; it's a feature of "my maps", which is hidden somewhere and has weird interactions with Google Maps.)