What you write is true for navigating when driving a car. For those who try to use Google Maps for other purposes, the changes are somewhat less useful.
I'd actually argue the contrary - viewing the map in transit is for the most part useless (not to mention dangerous if you're also the driver), and I'd assume most people rely on the audio cues rather than actually using the map. I would also guess that users would perhaps only look at it either prior to departure to get a general idea of what their route is like or when they're very close to their destination to look for something like parking or other landmarks to help navigate once near the location. (e.g., trying to navigate a new city and dealing with one-way streets)
You could be planning a trip - deciding where to stay for example.
I personally have found the new google maps very frustrating and slow - I'm constantly zooming in and out. This article finally made me realize what I'm missing, and why I'm having so much trouble with it.
Google Maps is used as the tiling layer for many non-navigation web apps: FlightRadar24 for example. Or those "find us" boxes on organisations' websites. In both those examples the map is used for geospatial orientation not navigation.
A week or two ago I was trying to determine what cities were underneath a flight path. It was particularly difficult, whereas it wouldn't have posed a problem prior to these changes.
