Google Maps is a fine mapping site, in the same vein as Yahoo Maps, Mapquest and now Bing Maps (that would be the new name for Microsoft’s search).

What I’ve always found frustrating about all of them is that they only offer you one route even when you know intuitively that there is a better way. Google Maps has tried to fix that. They now offer you alternative route directions.  Here are three suggested routes to get you from Coolidge Corner in Brookline, MA to Harvard Square in nearby Cambridge, MA.

The breakout between suggested routes was two good tries and a third thrown that must have been thrown in by a mapping algorithm with a sense of irony just to make the others look good.  Incidentally, none was the shortest route which you can probably track on the map with your eyes.  That was the one I took every day for years.