I have a similar experience. The addition of all the places details and reviews that are accessible inside of Google Maps has actually expanded its usefulness. Google Maps has grown to be more than just navigation software for me. I live in the US but was in Berlin recently. It seems that Google reviews have supplanted Yelp as the main platform for reviews over there. It honestly made things simpler and easier and I can see in the US it looks to be trending in the same direction.

I actually have more of an issue with the busyness of google.com and the search in Youtube than I do with the changes in Google Maps.