Google Kills Map Traffic Estimates In The US

If you’re wondering how road traffic’s gonna slow you today, don’t turn to Google Maps anymore – the site’s killed its estimates in the US (So far not in Australia). Not because it wasn’t popular. It turns out those road calculations didn’t exactly correlate to, you know, reality.

The Atlantic describes the discovery of perturbed Maps users, who complained to Google when they noticed the change. Its answer?

[W] e have decided that our information systems behind this feature were not as good as they could be. Therefore, we have taken this offline and are currently working to come up with a better, more accurate solution. We are always working to bring you the best Google Maps experience with updates like these!”

Translation: traffic didn’t work. And as The Atlantic‘s Nicholas Jackson asks, how could Google be sucking down so much locational data from Android drivers and be botching it to the point that they pulled it down entirely? [The Atlantic]