What happened to Google maps?

Browsing Google Maps over the past year or so, I've often thought that there are fewer labels than there used to be. Google's cartography was revamped three years ago - but surely this didn't include a reduction in labels? Rather, the sparser maps appear to be a recent development.An interesting article, for sure, but the final conclusion at the end of the article is a case of false equivalency; just because a classic paper map and a modern digital map are both 'maps', doesn't mean they are equivalents. There's no zooming and (easy) panning on paper maps, no search functionality, no natural language processing, no automatic route planning, no dynamic display, nothing. You can't simply apply what works for paper maps onto a static, fixed-zoom portion of a digital map and call it a day.That being said, Google Maps does have several really annoying lapses in interface judgement, such as that really annoying 'local photo's' bar that keeps popping back up no matter how often you tell it you're not interested, but that's a different matter altogether.