They aren't saying either of those things. They are saying "show me sushi stockholm" which google interprets as "show me sushi in stockholm" and as far as googl

They aren't saying either of those things. They are saying "show me sushi stockholm" which google interprets as "show me sushi in stockholm" and as far as google knows (and accurately as far as I'm concerned when I use google), any sort of searches explicitly limited to a known geographic area are best answered by a map of that area with search results shown on top of it. If you search for "getting sushi in stockholm" you don't get a map. The language that triggers a map as the first result is very specific and not limited to google. Individuals may find that they don't like the map as the first result for some queries, but as a company every major search engine as decided this is the best way to present certain results. Rail against it as a website owner or user all you want, but it is absolutely a legitimate practice. Of course it is possible to have better results for certain queries. Is it even remotely plausible for google to reliably decide that? To my knowledge, not without solving some very difficult problems, which they may or may not have any motivation to do, but they are certainly under no obligation to do it either.