The original Google Maps was pre-rendered in a gigantic MapReduce. It had many fewer landmarks. The modern Google Maps does a lot of the layout and rendering o

The original Google Maps was pre-rendered in a gigantic MapReduce. It had many fewer landmarks. The modern Google Maps does a lot of the layout and rendering on the client or on the fly, with a differing set of constraints and tradeoffs. It also has many more landmarks. You can see this in action by going to https://mapstyle.withgoogle.com/ https://mapstyle.withgoogle.com/ and playing with the "Landmarks" control.