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Comment by aikinai

2 years ago

This lowbrow criticism is really old. Google doesn’t do much offline for the same reason almost no one does offline anymore; it’s hard and the number of users affected is very small.

Do you honestly think Google is looking at the number of maps users that go offline and saying, “We absolutely need their data!” rather than “Eh, not worth rearchitecting everything for.”

Not to mention they have done a lot for it even if it’s not perfect. There’s a dedicated team doing their best with it. It’s just not worth giving a lot of attention and resources.

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aikinai

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Tijdreiziger  2 years ago

This post is about an offline maps app which is maintained by volunteers, so it can't be that hard for the likes of Google.

  • aikinai  2 years ago

    Google could certainly design a basic offline mapping app. They even have offline mapping in their app today.

    I’m actually not even sure what the complaint is actually about since I don’t use offline myself, but I know that Google Maps is a massive app with tons of teams all working on a myriad of features in parallel and a huge dependency tree. So I’m not surprised at all if there are a bunch of features with online assumptions baked in.

    • bb611  2 years ago

      As an egregious google maps power user, these are the ones that bother me:

      1. Offline maps don't actually download all the destinations in the mapped area

      2. Google maps is bad at displaying densely packed businesses - this is an issue online as well

      3. No offline bike or transit directions

      These are the 3 I checked immediately in organic maps, and all work significantly better there.

      I think your point is reasonable, but I'm also a very high income person who thinks nothing of buying data plans when traveling internationally and has an unlimited plan in the US. I routinely meet people while traveling who have the opposite set of financial priorities, organic maps is probably a great choice for them.