The other night I was thinking about the potential for "mapocalypse" -- navigation in a future where paper maps are rare because of services like Google maps and where the network is unavailable indefinitely. Even dedicated navigation devices are forgoing stored maps for connected services.

Over the long term, widespread access to offline maps feels like a critical plan B. I also suspect that we're just at the beginning of a map industry not in the mature commodity phase.

YMMV.