Somewhat better, maybe. It now allows me to download an area large enough to fit my entire home town. Still doesn't allow an entire country or even more, probably cause of bigger file size / more detail than the competitor i use.

But most importantly: It still requires me to sign into a google account to download an area.

Wow I missed that it requires you to sign in. I retract my statement that it has gotten better. Google can go to hell with requiring a sign in for everything.

OsmAnd is my favourite offline map. Worse for finding business but has much much better of walking only routes.

Google Maps offline has saved me a lot of headaches when traveling

I still don’t understand why they implemented this but it works very well. I wish OSM maps had the same level of offline search and routing.

I mean it's great to have a backup map if you go outside of cellular coverage. It works well overseas too, so you can save data and preload the map, or just use it offline entirely while you're travelling.

> I still don’t understand why they implemented this but it works very well. I wish OSM maps had the same level of offline search and routing.

What do you mean? Don't most OSM map apps have offline search and routing for any areas you have downloaded?

All the apps I have seen have terrible search. In Google I can type in "xxx Street Burbank" and will get a result. In OSM I have to go through state, city, zip and know all that stuff. Much worse than google Maps.