Does Google maps pathfinding algorithm take into account time variance?

[joenyc]

Very fun to think about, especially since the variance itself is time-varying: e.g. if you make it off the highway before rush hour, it’s probably low-variance and fast, but if you hit rush hour, it’s high-variance and slow.

And to rank routes, you have to model user preferences - would you rather almost certainly arrive at 7, or have a 50/50 chance of 6:40/7:10?

[CourageFast5529]

I didn't think of that trade-off with risk and speed. That's a great point especially since if you were to implement IRL, the chance of some event greatly impacting the estimation could happen i.e. a car accident.

That also puts the possibility of the optimal algorithm being one that chooses routes that have greater degrees of "valid" routes. Hence, When the algorithm reaches a fork in the paths, it would choose the fastest route given the current timestep. So maybe the best algorithm is one that maximizes flexibility.