I'll remake this at EOY for the next year etc

Submitting answers:

• Think of clear map related problems you have which could conceivably be solved by Google maps.

• I will ruthlessly edit or delete ones I don't like, sorry

• But if you do make a good one you can get a lot of trader mana

General:

• I use android and PC Firefox/chrome so most questions refer to that setup.

• I'm in the US; most of the requests relate to the US. I'll mostly test in CA but if a feature only exists in say, FL it would count. But a feature only available in a single non-US country is hard to treat as YES. This is debatable, though, for example if the country is the UK.

• On release levels: features behind rare abtest memberships don't trigger YES; but ones behind regional reqs can. For example, a single state or a large city within a state can still YES since at least the feature exists somewhere.

• On feasibility: generally when asking for a feature it needs to be first party, that is, provides out of the box to Google maps users, maybe behind some config or auth or scare warnings, but still available. So extensions and other methods of achieving the goal wouldn't count.

• Most claims can resolve immediately if they become true. There may be a delay while we verify; I accept user supplies devidence and don't need to experience it all myself

• On temporary releases: as long as a feature is broadly release in some region for at least a day, it counts even if it's withdrawn later. Generally I will resolve things quickly and I don't want to have a waiting period.

Here is how the map looks at market creation (the new PC color scheme):

Clarifications:

C: it just seems like when I navigated to location X, mentioned in my calendar as having an event starting at 8pm, it's 750pm now, I got here then drove around the block wandering randomly for ten minutes, google might be able to figure out and suggest "hey want me to find parking?" this would dynamically or even use the current system to help me find a place to park.

F: It's so crazy how Google's model of me is that at 830pm, while walking around a trendy district, the reason I searched "dessert" is that I'm planning a return visit to buy a cake at some later time, rather than that I'm trying to get dessert right now with my date. Fixes can be via better variable defaults, or just by making it much more obvious that what they're showing includes non open places (via icons or other ways to more clearly indicate that the results may include non-open places.) I know they should this via the additional tag you can click saying "open now" but that's not enough.

G: I don't want to page through multiple years of travel histories day by day to find it. This is basically about crossing timeline data with my current viewport.

H: Say you are driving cross country, want gas and pick a place at the next exit. Then you drive towards it but miss the exit cause a truck is in the way. The next exit is 3 miles down the road. Now, Google will direct you on a gigantic turn around loop to get to that exact gas station, literally driving by other, probably open gas stations, at the next exit. What I want is it to realize "hey this guy wants gasoline as a general concept, and isn't picky about where", NOT "this guy needs to go to a specific exxon station in a state he's never been to before, and I'll force him to that station only" Maps doesn't have to always do this but it at least must be possible/used sometimes.

J: I just want to know if they do this. If we know the answer, for any US jurisdiction, then YES.

M: Lots of people claim that "non-busy" but surviving businesses are actually tax writeoffs or even money laundering. i.e. you take your illegal cash money, book it as fake "orders" at your nail salon which never has actual customers, pay taxes on it, take the profits, and now it's clean money. The problem is that there are SO many seemingly completely non-busy stores around, which never seem to go away. My theory is that they're just proprietor owned places which pay little tax and are labors of love, and/or are not able to actually capture the gains from selling since they're grandfathered into a prior regime; selling would suddenly drop them into a completely new tax/zoning/etc system which they aren't prepared for. So, they just sit there, endlessly. From the state's POV, to address at least the money laundering theory, I would just compel google to silently pass me customer foot traffic data (with/without accompanying salary estimates from purchase history, tax returns from gmail, etc etc.) and then cross that with how long they spend in the store. If the totals don't add up, you deploy agents to surveil the place yourself to parallel construct a supposedly legit grassroots case against them, and sue them out of business. This market is about whether this info sharing compulsion is happening, either at the IRS level or within an agency of one of the 50 states.

Q: Various google blog articles suggest that is good to prefer certain business types to others based on the race of their proprietor. This already seems illegal under US law; google doesn't allow users to set these preferences to have inherent race/other group type preferences, which would be even more likely to be directly illegal under US law. Still, it's interesting how there is this contradiction between claims that using these kind of features is ethical, with their inactivity in actually making it real. Needless to say, this feature would also allow many types of horrible racist behavior to become standardized. For example, racist white people would be supported in excluding stores of other races in their search results - which would be very unamerican and pretty awful.

T: The white house says it has (4) reviews but I only see 3. Either way, it's weird.

U: I'm referring to the self-identification system for various ethnic/race/gender/sex groups in the USA such as "Black-owned businesses" etc.

W: this is more obscure. But for me, I want to learn more about the places I live and things I may have overlooked. So even when I'm driving w/out directions in a familiar location, or on a long trip involving say 200 miles on the same road, I'd like to leave the map open targeting "parks" so that it would constantly point me to the nearest park. That way if one showed up very near, like <4 min or a few miles, I might divert over that way to check it out. This is MUCH better than continuously repeating the search for 3 hours and then only choosing to go somewhere when the distance to a park was near. This is actually perfect since it's equivalent to setting a location-based alert like "alert me when I'm near a park (near=driving distance-wise)".