I don't think anyone's arguing that the new ways are better. However, it's not clear that we're going in the right direction and instead we're stuck in a local maximum. Maybe if we took a step back and had mapping provided as an open source service with offline maps then we wouldn't have the current problems with Google Maps (real-time traffic data can be queried anonymously). Or maybe if we designed streets that were easier to navigate we wouldn't need maps in the first place.
