You may be familiar with Gemini because it’s something that’s in every Google service you use – whether you want it to or not.
Although it has been a constant, sometimes unwelcome presence in Gmail for at least the last year, it is a relatively new addition to Maps. And you know what? This is great.
To test it out, I planned a one-day itinerary for myself across the city from Gemini. After about an hour of Gemini finding stuff for me – playgrounds near the new light rail extension, kid-friendly restaurants with vehicle themes, you get the gist – I was impressed. Some suggestions were obvious, but I also bookmarked some places that weren’t on my radar.
Gemini had big shoes to fill: my own. I am fond of Google Maps. I use it for normal things like getting around, but also, sometimes I like to scroll around and see if something new catches my eye. You can find some real gems this way. I found bike trails, playgrounds, hidden parks, and new coffee shops to try. I would spend all day every day in Seattle wandering around bookstores and fancy stationery stores via public transportation if I could. I usually spend a day off this way, but I get overwhelmed by the endless possibilities and head to one of the few neighborhoods I know well. So Gemini showed me the way to less familiar territory.
Gemini pops up as “Ask Maps” and presents you with a text box when you tap on it. It answers questions based on data from Google Maps, including user reviews, but can also pull information from other sources. If you ask whether to bring an umbrella on your trip across town, it can check the weather for you – that kind of thing.
I gave it my parameters: I would be traveling by public transportation and I wanted to stop for lunch, take a nice walk somewhere, and want a coffee shop where I could work on my laptop, in that order. I wanted to go to two different areas and I had to be home by 4:30. Its first suggestions were pretty coded – a café next to a bookstore and a reliable coffee shop in town – but I went to both recently. After a little back and forth it was settled: tacos, plants, and a Scandinavian-inspired coffee shop.
Tacos Chuquis is familiar to me but I was never familiar. I almost passed the place on foot, as it is located behind a building that houses a half-dozen other retail shops and has no signs on the sidewalk. But Gemini got me to the right place and at the right time: It had opened only 15 minutes before I was supposed to go in. My AI itinerary indicated that the house specialty with grilled pineapple was a popular choice, and I found out why. After three great tacos, it was time to head to my next stop.
Except I was ahead of schedule, so asked Gemini to find a unique shop nearby that I could check out before walking north toward the park. It confidently recommended Elliott Bay Books – a great location, but definitely not “one block east” as it claimed. This was the only major hallucination I encountered in this experiment, but it could have been a real pain if I had followed its instructions. Did I mention it was raining heavily outside?
When I politely informed Gemini that this was suggesting I walk 10 minutes in the wrong direction, he corrected and directed me to Kobo: a cute little shop with Japanese goods. I had been to their other location several times but I didn’t realize there was one nearby.
By the time I set foot in Volunteer Park, the front of my jacket was drenched. My umbrella was carrying heavy luggage, but I needed it to cover my backpack with the laptop. Hence, SOG. Gemini suggested a scenic loop around the park or a trip into the conservatory – basically a giant greenhouse – if I wanted to dry off. no contest.
Plants rule, man. Did you know that there is a tree that hollows itself out to attract ants? And ants fight off potential invaders to protect the tree? He is wild. That’s also a tree that exists in the Volunteer Park Conservatory, a building I had seen but never been inside. The entrance fee was $6 and I was a little angry with Gemini for not mentioning it, but it proved to be a small price to pay to spend time inside a warm, quiet oasis on a rainy day.
Someone working at the conservatory saw me marveling at a tall palm tree and taking pictures with his phone. She took me to the cacti room and insisted on taking my picture with the giant cacti there. “It’s so beautiful here I could cry!” He said, leaving me among the cacti. I had to agree. There’s something haunting about cactus, and they come in many different shapes and sizes, up to the classic saguaros that I know mostly from cartoons. There are ones that are covered in fur, big round ones that look like the world’s worst footstool, and another that looks like it’s covered in peeling waxpaper. When seen up close they appear haunted and mysterious in a way, like seeing an owl in the forest. Not the kind of scenery I expected on a very wet day in the Pacific Northwest.
I’ve been thinking lately about how tech companies want us to use AI to buy more things — even more so after a recent conversation I had with my friend Will Sattelberg. 9to5Google. It’s getting pretty old that every AI demo ends with you booking a flight or buying a new pair of sneakers. But it’s not just a tech company thing — I’m also checking my tendency to look for transactions whenever I leave the house.
I’m attracted to places where I can go with a new book, or coffee, or a little treat, I think it’s partly a way of reducing the anxiety that people have out in the world. How do you choose a location on a map when there are thousands of locations to choose from? What if I make the wrong choice and have a bad time? My thinking is that buying a small trinket proves I went somewhere worthy. But that feeling never goes away, so soon I’m planning another excursion on Google Maps, a fully curated home goods store that will fix me up.
In any case, I emerged from the conservatory with a few souvenirs – a soggy admission ticket and some child-sized gardening tools from the gift shop. my child Love I dig the garden when I weed, and it’s something I want to pay more attention to. Sometimes the best way to get out of the house can be to play in the dirt right outside, you know? Anyway, a hot, dry Route 10 bus was waiting for me to head to my final stop of the day: coffee.
How do you choose a location on a map when there are thousands of locations to choose from?
I had not heard of Day Maid Café, which I found strange, since I am in the neighborhood where it is often located. Based on Gemini’s description of a minimalist but warm and laptop-friendly coffee shop, it also seemed like my kind of place. I Was I had been there before, when I walked in I realized it was a coffee shop. This place used to be – you guessed it! – Fancy home goods store where I bought some Christmas gifts in 2024. Time is a flat circle, etc.
Gemini didn’t miss; day maid extremely My nonsense. The coffee was great and the vibes were impeccable. Gemini had said that the cardamom bun I wanted was not available, so to compensate for the bad weather I got a pastry with guava jelly. I quietly watched the launch of Artemis II, left the shop at 3:40 as instructed by Gemini, and boarded my last bus of the day. The time when I walked in the door of the house? 4:26. nailed it.
If my big day in the city was a success – and I think it was! -then it was made possible PeopleNot Gemini. People wrote reviews and recommendations which led me to Tacos Chuquis. Gemini is just a middleman. But when you’re working with huge and often heavy datasets like Google Maps, I find a tool like Gemini very useful.
To find out how kid-friendly a place is, I often rely on user reviews In fact There is, and Gemini allowed me to search a lot of those reviews at once in a wide area to find a place that serves both dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets and craft cocktails. But importantly, when it’s time to get from point A to point B, LLM doesn’t just freestyle and tell you transit directions — you simply open transit directions in Google Maps, which includes accurate real-time information.
Gemini also does a good job of showing his work when making suggestions so you can see where he’s making his claims. It is not immune to hallucinations, and this is especially a big concern when you are relying on it to propel yourself in the real world. But even knowing that this is the case, I still think it’s an impressive tool – whether you’re trying to find a restaurant with high chairs nearby and Now! Because everyone is hungry and grumpy, or you’re on a more leisurely adventure of discovery.
Photography by Alison Johnson/The Verge
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