Google Gemini can access Google Maps and provide recommendations. No more decision fatigue over where to go, just ask! ![[CleanShot 2025-05-20 at 09.36.44.png]] Gemini helpfully embeds an interactive map so you can see where things are. This is great. ## So, how good is it? It works! Which is already pretty good. I do wonder how it narrows down its results though. If you ask for "cafes in Taipei" there are _thousands_, and there are many that are more proximate and have better reviews than the ones it listed. So it seems fairly random in its ranking. This is not a bad thing, it's just something to note. Part of the beautify of discovering cafes is embracing the unknown. Don't optimize for reviews, just check out cafes. I've been to a number of cafes that were really great and only rated in the 3+ star range. Of course cafes with 4.6 stars are indeed better on average, but not always. However, once you get up to 4.9 stars there's usually some review fixing schema afoot, like offering a free cooke in exchange for 5 star reviews[^1]. ## It meets a ~~need~~ desire If you go on Google maps you can put together a list of candidate cafes and then randomly select amongst them, but you still have to put together that list yourself and you will (with 100% certainty) end up trying to run an opaque selection algorithm while you browse. That's time consuming. Letting the AI spit out a list of candidates is great. It saves time, it increases randomness. [^1]: I'm not sure if this is an issue in other countries, but in Taiwan the 4.9 star review specifically is a red flag. 4.5-4.7 is the sweet spot where they probably haven't juiced the reviews and real people actually like their establishment. # Outside of Gemini I've yet to see this integrated into other AI products. This sucks, but its understandable considering that you have to pay Google if you want to use the Maps search API. I wonder if we'll be able to get to the ultimate virtual assistant any time soon, because data is still siloed. I currently use ChatGPT for most of my searching, and it would be great if it could search for restaurants and cafes too. I'm sure someone could ducktape together a Google Maps MCP server and use Claude to do something similar, but it's still very manual. If we're talking about connecting MCP servers and API keys we're not yet talking about the ultimate virtual assistant. Fingers crossed computer use will be able to solve this.