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Elinor Mills drew a fun (I guess)
assignment at CNET: hitting the road to test competing driving directions from Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and Mapquest.
She notes the inconsistencies, and one consistent failing: all four of them are optimistic and unrealistic about how
long the trip should take. The test involved local driving in San Francisco, where unpredictable traffic can stretch
out a trip. But I have noticed the same thing on longer routes. Recently my wife and I planned a driving trip between
New Jersey and North Carolina. It’s a 450-mile span, and Mapquest promised to get us there in seven hours plus change.
Google and Yahoo! were not as preposterous, but their versions of the trip were also starry-eyed. Why this tendency, I
wonder? Is it a marketing ploy—fast directions are good directions? Over time, the tactic merely breeds distrust.
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