Debunked already, and the linked article contains a correction.
I mean, I guess they don’t “pop-up” as the correction says, but they definitely seem to appear when you’re driving and the map pans. It’s super distracting and frankly annoying AF when it keeps highlighting stores that I’ve never visited or would want to visit.
Yeah the sponsored pins are visible, and annoying. But they have nothing to do with driving and were there for many years. Google hasn’t added anything new, and definitely not any pop ups, like some random person falsely Tweeted and every news site ran with it.
Time to contribute more to osm before google maps becomes unusable I guess.
No surprise there, they might as well replace the little moving arrow with a moving ad at this point
