Algorithms are also part of Google Maps: It does plenty of window dressing in its depictions of places, using its Your Match score to present establishments it anticipates you’ll enjoy. By turning its search engine into the internet’s front page-and deciding what appears on it-the company may be the culprit most responsible for ending unexpected encounters. The platform has become a refuge from the internet that Google itself had a heavy hand in sculpting. Not that Google necessarily deserves any praise for the delightful weirdness of Google Maps. Google Maps offers something many other platforms no longer can: a hodgepodge of truly unfamiliar stuff that hasn’t been packaged for your taste or mine. But especially as algorithmic content has taken over the web, many of the surprises don’t feel fresh. Sometimes, pulling up TikTok’s “For You” page and getting sucked in by the app’s selections feels amazing. Instagram and TikTok, after all, are dominated by hyper-curated influencer content, served through feeds geared precisely to specific tastes. The result is random and messy in a way that is different from the rest of the social web. There’s plenty of detritus too: irrelevant photos, businesses that don’t exist, three-star reviews without an explanation. The pictures of a restaurant on Google Maps are often a mismatched succession of interior-design shots, flash photos of messy plates, and outdated menus. You upload your photos you leave your reviews you look at the artifacts others have left behind. To fill out the world map it created, Google invited people to add snippets to all the digital places. But along the way, it has become a social space too. Google Maps’ main purpose is to enable people to get directions and look up businesses. In Ecuador, I found half a dozen businesses that appear to be Simpsons-themed. There are the juiciest one-star restaurant reviews, such as this one from a café in my neighborhood: “totally unwarranted douche energy from ownership, expired motor oil passed off as coffee, and price-gouged food that is prepared and sourced as terribly as their coffee.” Brutal. Among the treasures to discover are blurry photographs of late nights in dive bars, ratings of obscure colonial-American-life museums, and selfies on a mountain I’ll never visit. It’s a bit like Where’s Waldo?, but at the world’s scale. Cities and rivers and streets and businesses begin to come into focus, colored with millions of user-uploaded images and reviews. I glide over a digital rendering of the Earth, spin it like a globe, and zoom in. The point is not to hunt for a bite to eat or plan a trip-it’s pure entertainment. Whenever I want to avoid work, Google Maps is my go-to.
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