Despite all the convenience and quality of Google’s sprawling ecosystem, some users are fed up with the fishy privacy policies the company has recently implemented in Gmail, Chrome, and other services. To its credit, Google has made good changes in response to user feedback, but that doesn’t diminish the company’s looming shadow over the internet at large.

If you’re ready to ditch Google, or even just reduce its presence in your digital life, this guide is here to help.

The world might feel like a mess right now, depending on your technological, financial, or political interests, but there's one thing I think we can all get universally excited about. Google Maps has finally come to CarPlay.

I’m a sucker for anything that takes text data and turns it into something visual. This week I came across Location History Visualizer, a tool that creates a heat map using your Google Location History.

If you own an electric car, one of your biggest road trip challenges is finding a charging station. This week Google made that process a bit easier when it added EV charging station information to Google Maps.

Google has been adding the insides of buildings to its Google Maps Street View for years now, and Google Arts & Culture (the program that brought you “find your art doppelgänger”) has been collecting all kinds of art you can see on Street View: Museums, famous architecture, street art, and art exhibits that already closed in real life. Here’s the guide to Google’s virtual art collection.

Google Maps has just introduced three big changes to the service aimed specifically at commuters - including a new feature exclusive to Sydneysiders! Here's what you need to know.

iOS: People generally tend to pick one mapping app for their phones and stick with it, but there are times you might need to pull up another app on your iPhone — perhaps you need to CarPlay your directions instead of having the Google Assistant shout them out.

You may think you’ve turned Google’s location tracking history off, but according to a new Associated Press report released today, you might be wrong.

When you’re travelling with a larger group, you seem to always be receiving or sending a “Where are you guys?!” text.

Flat maps are so 7000 BC. With modern computers, we have the technology to render the world in its true form (ignoring conspiracies): a globe. Or oblate spheroid, if you prefer. Which is why it's a surprise it took Google this long to adopt a rotatable, third-dimension for Maps.

In recent months Google Maps has gotten pretty persistent about letting me know where there are restaurants it thinks I should try or new places opening up in my neighbourhood — and I hate it. As it turns out, I don't really need the app to tell me what's going on around me and with each hot tip I get more and more annoyed.

We all love the convenience of mapping apps, but many of us would prefer that the app stick with a route we know is golden, rather than rerouting us all over the place to save a few minutes in traffic.

Google Maps gets you directions to where you're going, but now it can also direct on your quest to try all the best burgers in town.

iOS: Earlier this year, Google teamed up with Nintendo to turn Google Maps into Mario Kart, replacing the app's usual location icon with a fist-bumping plumber riding a red go-kart. The crossover didn't last very long, but Google is now bringing back some of that magic with a new update to the Maps app on iOS.

Google's done more than almost any other company to bring virtual reality to the masses, from making cheap Cardboard headsets to giving the public easy ways to create and share 360-degree photos. Now the company is giving VR fans another way to dive in with a new tool called Tour Creator.

Google's annual I/O developer's conference always provides an exciting swathe of Google-related updates and improvements to their services and so far, it's delivering. Their key messaging this year is solving problems with AI and with the incoming upgrades to Google Maps, their advanced AI and algorithms will help you find things to do, places to eat and organise getting together with your friends.

Starting today, if you ask Google Assistant on your phone, Chromebook, or Google Home device "Where's Wally?" you'll actually get an answer.

Back in 2014, Google teamed up with Nintendo to hide Pokemon across Maps. It was surprisingly fun, paving the way for Pokemon GO. Now, the two companies are working together again to transform your turn-by-turn driving directions into a little homage to Mario Kart.

If you want to get to your destination fast, then you're possibly better off using Google Maps or Waze over Apple Maps. Waze if you truly want the "fastest" option.