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Tangent but I was always annoyed at how poorly google products work offline. One time I was using google maps to navigate to a remote address. Once I got close to the address google maps crashed and I re-opened the app. I had no cellular service. The app remembered the actual map data but did not remember the address I had just typed in to the program 15 minutes earlier. I had to guess what street address I was heading to! Why they designed the app to store all search history exclusively in the cloud and not keep a local copy is beyond me, but I presume when working at google they always have an excellent connection and hadn’t thought of what would happen if a user lost service. Being able to at least see the search history would have saved me some grief!



I've experienced that same behavior too. But I also happen to know that, at least in the earlier days of android, they had sophisticated labs available for emulating poor network conditions and software for spoofing GPS on-device in the lab.

Which just makes it more frustrating.


> Why they designed the app to store all search history exclusively in the cloud and not keep a local copy is beyond me

It used to. It was intentionally removed. I say this as a customer who read the update notes, not as an employee of Google.

I'll let you guess why they did. I have my opinion why and it is not flattering to the company, to say the least.


https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/22/tech/google-street-view-priva...

Hey, who remembers Street View cars collecting SSIDs...


For all the hate it gets, I can confirm that Apple Maps does not exhibit this behaviour, and I also believe Waze doesn’t, as well; though my memory is hazy on that one.

Driving around in Northern Canada, as I am often wont to do with my partner; you’re without cell service at least half the time; and even when you do have cell service - data is very uncommon.

My girlfriend and I ran into this issue twice with Google Maps, tested if Apple Maps exhibited the same behaviour, and since it hadn’t - neither of us have actually used Google Maps since.

This is - of course - iOS-specific advice.


Making a tool that retains it's use in isolation from Google and the cloud is antithetical to the SaaS philosophy.




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