This is exactly what I usually want to do with maps. I have a route I want to plan, and I want to do more than one thing along my route, or see what else is in the area. It's futile in Google Maps.
I see no reason that supporting this thing that old mapping software used to support would elevate it "above" other use cases. If you just want a single route, you do one search and you see the result and you never click the "add" button, no problem.
I should dig out an old Delorme Street Atlas CDROM and install it in a VM, to get some sense of how many clicks it took to do the things I used to do. I don't think it was many. It was definitely pickier about address entry; that's one place Google has absolutely improved. But aside from that, it was way more powerful at pretty much everything else.
Not trying to just nitpick, but if we assume that the Google Maps use research and data from users when planning features then the feature you're after may actually not be very common.
And your answer to someone asking "Why do you think that use case is that common?", your first line literally just talks about your use case from your point of view:
> This is exactly what _I_ usually want to do with maps. _I_ have a route _I_ want to plan, and _I_ want to do more than one thing along my route, or see what else is in the area. It's futile in Google Maps.
I'm not saying that wouldn't be useful, it's just that maybe not that many people need it... I guess it was built with the idea that you would just open more tabs to search other things?
> if we assume that the Google Maps use research and data from users when planning features
Based on what I've seen from Google product design, this is a pretty bold assumption.
While Google has access to unfathomable amounts of data collected from users, it's more than happy to eschew that if the data conflict with higher-level product or company strategy decisions, which generally are much less motivated by raw user data,
I see no reason that supporting this thing that old mapping software used to support would elevate it "above" other use cases. If you just want a single route, you do one search and you see the result and you never click the "add" button, no problem.
I should dig out an old Delorme Street Atlas CDROM and install it in a VM, to get some sense of how many clicks it took to do the things I used to do. I don't think it was many. It was definitely pickier about address entry; that's one place Google has absolutely improved. But aside from that, it was way more powerful at pretty much everything else.