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How far we've come... in the brilliant 80's you had glove compartment boxes with various maps. Those well-highlighted AAA TripTiks to help guide you on those long distance travels. The mid-90's brought us MapQuest and here we are, rounding the bend into 2010 and at the forefront is Google Maps.

So, we all have general experiences with online mapping but let's speak in specifics.

Tonight, I ran out of gas. It's a wretched feeling and without getting into the gory details I'll simply say my desire for speedy arrival was satisfied but my eventual departure was going to be difficult.

So I turn to my handy-dandy fully Internet enabled Google G1 device to save the day (GPS enabled) with Google Maps!

You can follow along... So here is where I ended up stopped: Stuck-ville

So... I searched "Gas"

Alright, score, a pushpin nearby! Google Maps says there's a 7-11 less than a block away. Oh....

There are two major problems with this.
1. In my entire time here in Los Angeles, I've not seen ONE 7-11 that sold gas. Now, in many other locations 7-11 is more than a convenience store but here in LA 7-11 is not synonymous with gas station.
2. It's not a 7-11. It's a nightclub: Eleven. Perhaps Google things alcohol might power my motor vehicle?

No biggie, but in all my search results, this result kept coming up. I wanted it gone for this search... it was worse than useless, it was in the way.

So, I end up walking up the street to "D" - Sunset Oil (or any of the four duplicate names that popped up for the exact same address). Of course, a 2 gal gas canister was $18.95 + tax, about ten times the cost of the amount of gas I needed.

Once again I turned to my trusty phone. Gravity determined my path. The street sloped downward in a particular direction, that was the way I went. Toward "Kitson Melrose" -- funny name for a gas station. I'm within two blocks and the slope ends, I end up walking to that location. Standing on the corner there... well I'll let Google Street Views put it best:

Do you see the gas pumps? No, at 12:30am, neither did I. Visit their website: http://www.shopkitson.com/ -- unless they're clothes are gas-powered, I have no idea why this result comes up for "gas" and "gas station"?

Next closest result, "Cedar Sinai Medical Center Gas" -- anyone want to take a chance on that one? Yeah, neither did I... but I couldn't remove this result from my screen. No way to say, "NO! Not that."

I walk back to my motorcycle and begin pushing down the street toward Mobil. I stop to check the directions to the Mobil location.

It's got a barely perceptible slope but it helps! Finally getting close... pushing the whole way.

One problem. Google thinks that street goes through, but it doesn't. Their street view puts it best.

Mapquest (which I didn't think to use at the time) properly shows that there is a locked emergency gate on the road, luckily I was able to bypass it on the sidewalk, but had I been in a car, I would have been quite disappointed.

Finally, I reached a gas station. Not too bad but very annoyed with Google Maps.

Do I expect perfection from Google? Nah. But come on! A Nightclub for gas?! Blocked streets?

How difficult would it be to provide the ability to remove irrelevant results from my searches? Shouldn't the most powerful search engine and one of the largest aggregate collections of raw data in the world be able to differentiate between 7-11 with gas and one without? What's their source? How about displaying a clothing store as a gas station!?

I have to admit, researching this posting, Mapquest did a much better job of showing legit gas stations (they have a handy icon) and it properly identified dead-end roads.

It seems to me Google Maps is lacking in follow-through. They come up with things like Google Street Views but don't utilize those pictures to determine that streets are blocked, not thru-streets. What do you think?

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