[eldenbishop]

I have no idea what google optimizes for but it's not time or distance. At least in my neighborhood (San Francisco) it almost alway pushes you onto "main" traffic streets over much faster and more direct routes. It's trivial to just drag the line to a better route and see the time drop by several minutes over just a few miles. And this is not a traffic thing, they are longer even late at night. Maybe some agreement with the district to prefer mandated high traffic areas?

[kqr]

I think it's simpler than that: they probably weigh in popularity to some degree already. It's a very cheap way to be able to get to a point where you can say, "it's not optimal, but at least it's not awful".

In other words, just like nobody got fired for buying IBM, nobody got fired for suggesting the popular streets.