The driving directions feature on Google Maps has just received a major upgrade. Multiple stops and traffic conditions have (apparently) been added, but the big one is that you can now change the route you’re given to your destination by clicking and dragging it to a new highway. (Essentially, it does so by adding a waypoint.)

The concomitant interface changes are, as you might expect, pretty flipping elegant. Here’s Google’s video explaining the new stuff:

The usefulness of draggable driving directions is obvious: in addition to routing around the traffic congestion so helpfully pointed out by Google Maps, you can also reroute clearly nonsensical directions that such systems inevitably spit out from time to time.

Frank points out that the directions can be exported to Google Earth.