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So, did they just reinvent the Maidenhead locator ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maidenhead_Locator_System ) or any of the previous systems?

There's a pretty solid evaluation of the new system in terms of the old ones at: https://github.com/google/open-location-code/wiki/Evaluation...

Indeed maidenhead seems to be the strongest of the previous approaches, they rejected it because it can include words.