Google committed one of the biggest cardinal sins of app development and changed some colors without telling anyone. The internet is, of course, furious.
First spotted by 9to5Google in late August as a limited test, Google Maps has a slightly changed color scheme, which has since rolled out to a wider audience, apparently starting this week. One should not look far X (formerly Twitter) or Reddit to find people complaining about it.
Teenagers weren’t allowed to use Google Bard — until now. What has changed with the AI bot?
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To be more specific about the changes, the most noticeable one is probably that the blue color for bodies of water is now significantly lighter than before. It’s almost teal at this point. The roads are gray (they used to be white) and the forested areas are a darker green than before.
It’s not a huge change, but if you’re really used to the way Google Maps has looked for years, it can be quite distracting at first.
Why did Google do this? Who knows! 9to5Google pointed out that it looks a little more like Apple Maps, but given that Google Maps has always had a better reputation than the Apple equivalent (at least among the people I talk to), that would be a strange reason to change the aesthetic .
Maybe they just got bored and decided to make a change – like someone choosing a new hairstyle out of nowhere.
