This has been around for a while. Also, it's less than ideal, as it is simply a cache of the map (meaning no directions). Its good if you need a traditional map map, but not so good if you're used to the robustness of having a smartphone map.
I used it while abroad. Since the GPS works, you can see where you are on the map, which is a big plus over only a paper map. Obviously getting data access would be even better, but it's a nice free alternative.
The post is dated July 10, 2011 people...
Haha! Oh wow, I need to pay attention more.
Seems like Google announced this event out of pure fear, then only later scrounged up some content for it.
They've already had offline maps in labs for around a year I think - go into labs, enable 'offline caching', click an area, then 'cache for offline' - it'll grab a 10 mile square of the map around the pin.
The announcement seems to be that the feature is coming out of beta.
Yep. At today's event they revealed the polished version of the feature, which lets you define the area to cache by hand, and provides a formal UI for managing your cached areas and telling you how much data it will require. Here's the demo:
Yeah, I'll agree that the event didn't really seem necessary, though the part of the talk about the products' history and development was interesting, as well as looking at the new Street View devices. The really interesting part for me was at the end, when they showed off their new 3D city modelling efforts. Really amazing stuff: