Is there an advantage over the already established Maidenhead Locator system? [1]
Form a first look it seems very similar.
"Maidenhead Locator System codes explicitly represent areas, and can be truncated in a similar way to Open Location Codes. The accuracy and length of the codes is similar, but Maidenhead Locator System codes include vowels and so the generated codes include words"
"Maidenhead Locator System codes are based on an interleaving of latitude and longitude, and so are truncatable, and nearby locations have similar codes. It is only formally defined to a length of 8 characters."
This suggests (when compared with their 'desired attributes' [2]) that their innovation over it is increased precision, and a different symbol alphabet to reduce profanity.
[1] https://github.com/google/open-location-code/wiki/Evaluation... [2] https://github.com/google/open-location-code/wiki/Evaluation...