Or you could use a reasonable API like Mapbox and get better quality data for much, much cheaper.

Google Maps data quality has been tailing off. I encounter missing roads that are on the county parcel viewer and in OpenStreetMaps yet Google couldn't be bothered to ingest this public data. These roads aren't new, you can go back and look at county GIS exports from a decade ago and the road is there in the exact same place.

Google is still the king of points-of-interests and local businesses. Places that a tourist would actually care about. Mapbox would not even be within 1 or 2 order of magnitudes when it comes to this data.

Yes, places where people spend money are the only map info Google cares about. Outside of cities and towns it's a joke.

Or use OpenTripPlanner, OpenStreetMaps with Pelias or similar.

You're missing the point entirely. It's not about the Mercedes. If anything, Google makes it impossible and unaffordable to serve up the useful information you desire.