Is Google Maps worsening? The latest updates have reduced its features

In recent months, Google Maps’ users, the most common navigation app in the world, have had to clash with many small steps back. One of the latest “surprises” concerns the disappearance of the controls for the management of music while navigating Android smartphones. But it is not the only one: between the halved chronology and the online research made more uncomfortable, there are several updates that perhaps should be reviewed.

Until recently, anyone could listen to music or podcast on Spotify, Amazon Music or YouTube Music and check their reproduction (pause, forward, back) directly from the Maps interface, without having to leave the app and lose sight of the route. With the most recent versions of the operating system, however, this function has disappeared. The command bar, usually clearly visible in the lower part of the screen while driving, is vanished, together with the option to reactivate it in the settings.

Google confirmed that it is a bug and promised to solve it, but did not provide a date for restoration. It must be said that on iOS devices (Apple), for now, everything works regularly. The fact remains that for millions of Android users, this lack translates into a concrete drying: having to get out of navigation to change their songs, distract and waste time, with all the risks that follow.

Recently, another blow suffered by Google Maps’ loyalty has come with the modification to the use of the timeline, the chronology of positions that allows you to review past movements. Previously, this function automatically saved the Google account routes, allowing you to access, even after months or years, to travels made and places of interest visited. Now it is no longer so: starting from July 2025, the chronology will be stored exclusively on the user’s device and the most old data of 90 days will be deleted unless manually performs a local backup.

Google motivated the choice as a step forward in the protection of privacy, but for many it translates into a loss of practicality. It will no longer be possible, for example, easily backup of the travel historian on another device. And those who do not pay attention to the new rescues risk irreversibly compromising their data, without considering that many users have reported that they have lost their chronology even after activating the rescue.

If the management of the chronology has become more complicated, even the simple consultation has lost immediacy. For some time, when looking for a place on Google, the map displayed among the search results is no longer clickable directly to open the Maps app. In its place, a static image or preview appears, forcing the user to have to take an extra step to open the application in a new card or manually type the search within the program.

A detail? Perhaps, but in daily use it translates into continuous frustration, especially for those who often use Maps to obtain quick indications. In addition, even on desktop some functions are less reactive: the right click on the image, which in the past allowed to activate street view or to obtain the coordinates, now, in some cases, no longer offers options, making the navigation experience more cumbersome.

Although presented as updates to improve privacy or simplify operations, these changes give the impression of an increasingly efficient and more complicated app app. The widespread belief among users is that Google is sacrificing the usability of Maps in favor of a more fragmented and controlled management of the data, or worse still, whether it is choices dictated by internal non -clear logic to the final users.

Of course, there are interesting news, such as the possibility of tracing places starting from photos saved in the telephone tunnel. But for now the small “worsenings” seem to overcome the improvements, and with alternatives like Waze, which still offer integrated musical checks and a simplified interface, it is not said that in the future the leadership of Google Maps remains unassailable.