Odysseus Left a Google Maps Review

★☆☆☆☆ 

One star. I would leave zero but the app does not allow it and I have spent the last ten years doing things that were not allowed so I am trying to respect boundaries now.

Let me be specific.

The Route

Google Maps estimated this journey at three weeks. I want to be clear about what actually happened, which is that it took ten years. A decade. I left a young man with a wife, a son, a dog, and reasonable expectations about the future. I arrived an old man in disguise at my own front door because my house had been taken over by 108 suitors eating my food, and my wife was one bad day away from picking one of them. My dog recognized me and then immediately died, which I think means he was waiting, and I cannot think about that for too long or I will not be able to finish this review.

Three weeks, Google. You said three weeks.

The Monsters

I have turned on the "avoid tolls" setting. I have turned on "avoid highways." There is no setting for "avoid the island of a cyclops who will eat several of my crew members and need to be blinded with a sharpened stake before I can escape by hiding under a sheep." There is no setting for this. I checked. I checked at the time and I have checked again recently and it is still not there.

Additionally:

• Scylla and Charybdis: not marked. At all. The route took me directly between a six-headed monster and a giant whirlpool and Google Maps displayed this stretch as a pleasant blue line with zero warnings. A blue line. I lost six men to Scylla. Six. The app rerouted cheerfully afterward and said "you're on the fastest route."

• The Sirens: listed as a "point of interest." That is one way to put it.

• Circe's humble abode: listed as a "local favorite." My crew was turned into pigs. Some of them enjoyed it more than I expected, which raised separate questions I did not have time to process.

• The Lotus-Eaters: listed as a "highly rated stop." Do not stop. Do not let your crew stop. Do not let your crew eat anything anyone on that island offers you. The rating system on this app is broken.

• The Cattle of the Sun God: labeled "scenic farm." I told my crew not to eat them. I told them specifically. I said: do not eat the divine cattle. I was very clear. They ate the divine cattle. Zeus destroyed the ship. I floated on debris for nine days. I'm giving Google two stars off for the "scenic farm" label because it contributed to a false sense of safety and I am standing by that.

The Detours

At one point the app routed me to the underworld. I want to say that again. The underworld. The realm of the dead. I had to speak to the ghost of my dead crew member Tiresias to get directions, which is not a sentence I expected to type but here we are. When I returned to the surface, the app said "you have arrived at your destination" and the destination was not Ithaca. It was not close to Ithaca. I do not know what destination it thought I had.

I was also detained on an island by a nymph named Calypso for seven years. I have looked at the app's terms of service and I cannot find the clause that covers this. I feel there should be a clause.

The ETA Updates

The app updated my estimated arrival time 47 times over the course of ten years. At one point it said I was "12 minutes away." I was on a raft in the open ocean with no land visible in any direction. I screamed at the sky. Poseidon, who had been trying to kill me for the entire journey due to a separate incident involving his son the cyclops, sent a storm. I do not think these events were related but the timing was unfortunate.

The Arrival

I eventually arrived home by ignoring the app entirely and navigating by stars, which is what I should have done from the beginning, and which I will be doing from now on, and which I am noting here because I think it is relevant feedback for the development team.

My house was full of men. My wife had been waiting and had been very clever about it, which I knew she would be, because she is Penelope, and she is smarter than the app and also smarter than me, which she demonstrated by making me prove I was myself before she would acknowledge me, which was fair. I had been gone ten years. She was right to ask.

My son is grown. My dog is dead. My crew is mostly dead. I am home.

Three weeks, Google. You said three weeks.

Suggestions for the Development Team

• Add monster warnings. This is a basic feature request. I should not have to explain why.

• "Avoid divine retribution" toggle. Optional but appreciated.

• Do not route users through the underworld unless they explicitly opt in.

• The ETA system needs work. I understand traffic is unpredictable but the underworld should add more than twelve minutes.

• Allow zero star reviews. Some of us have earned the right.

RESPONSE from Google Maps (2 weeks later)

Hi Odysseus, thanks for taking the time to leave a review! We're sorry to hear your journey didn't go as planned. We're always working to improve our routing. For future trips, we recommend enabling real-time traffic updates and ensuring your map data is up to date. If you'd like to report a missing landmark, you can do so by long-pressing the location in the app. We hope to see you on the road again soon!

Odysseus (reply, immediately)

I will never use this app again. I am home and I am staying there. Thank you.