8 ms·

And if you can't use OSM, try Here maps. They are easy to download for offline use. Following the suggestion of friends, I have repurposed an old phone as a "t

by 1996 8y ago

And if you can't use OSM, try Here maps. They are easy to download for offline use. Following the suggestion of friends, I have repurposed an old phone as a "travel phone" with maps of the whole world (or at least the parts I can download!) Not perfect, but when I catch a plane, I don't have to worry about local networks. Fun story: recently in Europe, Google Maps stuttered. Now and then, there was a networking issue. It is almighty wiseness, Google Maps was then showing a white page instead of showing me the previously downloaded maps. This was irksome, especially in navigation mode. I was litteraly following my way on the screen, when it turned white in front of my eyes. Several times. I turned white too. After that, I decided I would take a chance with the backup plan. I turned off the phone and used the travel phone instead. No network, so no lookup of business names, but Here maps offline with street addresses did better than Google Maps online. I called that a learning experience. I later was told Google Maps lets you download some tiles, but it is not as convenient as having litteraly every continent saved. I do not want to plan what part I may need. Just "down it all"!

the_new_guy_29 8y ago
I would say that when it comes to Europe maps, TomTom ones are hands down the best. But thats not weird as majority of their business resolves around Europe.
dev_dull 8y ago
Your anecdote falls into the trap I see often when comparing OSS software vs proprietary. You’ve found a obscure, uncommon use case where OSM works better. However, the opposite needs to be true for adoption. OSM needs to work better for 80% of the use cases, not the other 20.
- wtallis 8y ago
  Are gaps in cell coverage really that obscure a use case? Sure, if you're only using the maps to route you around traffic jams in your home town, offline maps aren't going to offer you any benefit. But I think most users also want their maps to continue to be reliable when heading out of town on a road trip. Google has improved the behavior of their maps app when data connectivity is interrupted, but it's still a sub-par experience and quite frustrating.
  - criley2 8y ago
    Google makes it trivial to download maps for offline use, I have multiple states downloaded in Maps. Google Maps experience with offline downloaded maps is 100% quality and absolutely not "sub-par" or "frustrating".
    - propogandist 8y ago
      by trivial, you mean logged into a google account where all 'offline' activity is synced and mapped to your account once connectivity is restored. I also find it hard to believe that Google maps offline can't give voice navigation (reverts to beeps) and that requires constant data connectivity... the app is constantly phoning home too.
      - brewrwe 8y ago
        Google Maps is pretty bad without fast, reliable data, I remember trying it on Sprint, no joy unless I could pull at least a megabit a second.
        eigenvector 8y ago
        The problem is that there is no user-settable 'offline mode', so as soon as Google detects an Internet connection (even a very slow one) it starts trying to behave as if it's on a 100Mbps LTE connection. This makes many Google apps totally unusable on low-bandwidth networks. When you open apps like Hangouts, Google Maps, etc. on low-bandwidth connections, they immediately try to sync an onslaught of data before making the UI responsive based on the existing offline state. Data that could take hours to sync at 5kb/s. There's no reason I haven't have a text-only messaging conversation perfectly well on a 2G network. Except when Google tries to sync 50MB of pictures from a conversation I haven't even selected yet, and all of my 500 contacts' profile photos, before I can do anything else. Incidentally, this is why everyone outside of North America uses WhatsApp.
        brewrwe 8y ago
- themodelplumber 8y ago
  OSS's greatest leverage points have always been in the niches, the cases where _if_ it's useful in your situation, you are a very lucky person indeed. Having read the article I think it's using a great little leverage point: Do you have a website with a map? Does the map not work anymore? ("Yikes, will my map stop working," people think) OSS doesn't have to win big popularity battles; the little cases here and there just add up over time. Soon it's in the background of everything, even proprietary software, because it's so useful that migration and contributions to the source code make sense.
  - brewrwe 8y ago
    More like anywhere vaugely rural, Google Maps seems to fail. Going out to the San Juans? Have fun with missing business listings, incorrect road traces and names, or worse. Just in the past decade Kitsap County (just across the water from Seattle) has renumbered 300k addresses. Google Maps is buying their address database from a vendor that rarely pulls this publicly posted data, thus leaving Google a few years behind (except for spotty user corrections). OSM comparatively gets this data right from the county every week, which is great since they're renumbering 30k more addresses currently. Google will take a few more years to get any of this data if they stick to their current operational model.
    - eigenvector 8y ago
      Entire countries and continents are far more detailed on OSM than Google. There's a feedback cycle where having lots of active users to passively harvest data or receive user-submitted corrections from improves your map quality. Well, Google Maps is a really bloated app that can barely open on the budget Android phones people use in most developing countries (hell, GMaps pegs the CPU on a 2-year old flagship for several seconds just starting the app). When nobody uses Google Maps, Google Maps will never have good street/address data. In developing countries there's no official government office to get this data from, just user data.
      - sho_hn 8y ago
        It strikes me as obvious that what Google should do is support OSM upstream and use OSM data in their product, just as what they do with Wikipedia.
- nashashmi 8y ago
  > found a obscure, uncommon use case where OSM works better. Isn't that the entire point of open source technologies? If a platform is open source, then you can make whatever custom changes you personally need and make it work for your particularly scenario. Downloadable maps, archivable maps, platform independent maps, faster loading maps, more accurate maps, more niche data centric maps, and fail-safe maps are all examples of maps that a particular person needs in a particular setting at a particular time. It is not software for the masses, just software for the massive number of little things you could possibly need.
- ghaff 8y ago
  I'm not sure why it has to be either/or. I use Google Maps routinely for traffic routing among other things. I also routinely use OSM to have offline maps when traveling, for hiking, and various other things.
- marcosdumay 8y ago
  Working without a network is niche now? Anywhere you go far from a city will lack a network.
  - eigenvector 8y ago
    Or working on a slow, spotty network, which is par for the course for 'the next billion users' that tech execs keep talking about.
    - ufo 8y ago
      Or if your mobile connection has strict data caps...
  - whatsstolat 8y ago
    Also Here was useful to me when I burned up my data allowance.
  - e3b0x1 8y ago
    It’s really useful when you’re traveling abroad and might not have access to any data right away.
- tiatia123 8y ago
  You obviously did not read the previous post or you don't know what HERE maps are.
Nux 8y ago
+1 Here maps (it's the old Nokia maps, now under Daimler and others). Probably the best UX of any map apps and some great sounding voices.
- 1996 8y ago
  I think we both have the same experience. User interface and user experience in Here are heads and shoulder above google maps IMHO, so much that after this, I also installed Here maps on my regular phone. The best interface is still on my old windows phone, with zero ads, back when Microsoft owned Here. Someone said I found an obscure usecase. I disagree. Navigating without a reliable data connection is not obscure and uncommon!! Even if it was, my obscure case is very embedded in my mind. I don't care about the 99% cases when google maps work. I care about the 1% when it doesn't work while I need it. This is why after this, I've decided it was safer to migrate my mapping needs to a more robust solution. I don't care about how wide user adoption is. I care that it solves my problem better than the alternatives!
  - yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
    > I don't care about the 99% cases when google maps work. I care about the 1% when it doesn't work while I need it. This right here is a huge reason I distrust Google apps. When it's good, it's good, and when it isn't... it's terrible.
- Marsymars 8y ago
  > Probably the best UX of any map apps Except for the ads, which I consider to be pretty terrible UX compared to not having any ads. I'd be willing to pay to avoid any ads in HERE Maps.
  - Nux 8y ago
    I've been using Here Maps for 4-5 years now and haven't seen a single add. Are you sure we are talking about the same app?
    - 8y ago
chucksmash 8y ago
Google Maps also offers offline maps.
- mgkimsal 8y ago
  came here to say that. it was a pleasant surprise in january of this year - had little internet connection while exploring a small island (got off a cruise ship). Found google maps had an 'offline mode', so I just downloaded the maps for the island and was good to go. Wasn't until April that maps notified me that the data was expiring and would be deleted.
  - 1996 8y ago
    If I am lost on an island, the last thing I want is google to decide by itself that my data is too old and my expired maps should be deleted for my own good.
    - mgkimsal 8y ago
      It was 4 months later and it gave the option of keeping it.
- ghaff 8y ago
  Which can't be downloaded in many places. I assume it has something to do with their licenses but, outside the US, I have run into a number of situations where I couldn't download an area. ADDED: I always download the OSM data into Maps.me on my iPhone before I travel internationally. If nothing else, it's a useful backup.
mtmail 8y ago
https://maps.me/download/ https://maps.me/download/ (free for iOS and Android) let's you download countries for offline use. Includes search and car navigation. Based on OpenStreetMap data.
- ant6n 8y ago
  I just downloaded the app and opened it, and it showed me white, and told me I had to download my city first (56MB). I doubt you can download whole countries at that rate. Also, including the App that was a lot of downloading just to look at a single map.
  - ethelward 8y ago
    > I doubt you can download whole countries at that rate. What? GMaps alone is already 30MB and has to download all of its maps on the fly. What do you think, that Google alone has a magic way of making up maps out of thin air? And of course you can download whole countries at once, Germany for instance is ca. 1GB, which is totally doable on your home WiFi.
  - beagle3 8y ago
    You are not getting a working google maps (or here maps, or bing maps) app for much less. I have several countries and states on my phone, totaling about 600MB; I download a country on WiFi before leaving for the airport, and I'm guaranteed to have a working map with routing regardless of how well data works when I arrive. maps.me is really excellent. The only thing is, it's owned by Yandex (the russian equivalent of Google), so your whereabouts are reported to the NKVD/KGB/FSB/whatever-it-is-called-these-days rather than to the NSA.
sorenjan 8y ago
I use Maps.me, it's OSM based offline maps. Pretty often they're better than Google maps when I just want to look at a map and see different paths and so on, I rarely use Google maps to look up businesses, which seems to be their main focus. And it's a great security to always have maps available regardless of network connectivity. https://maps.me/download/ https://maps.me/download/
ghaff 8y ago
Somewhat similar. I have a multiple generations old iPhone in a waterproof Otterbox case and I mostly use it for various GPS and mapping apps. I do have to remember to keep it charged--its battery life isn't what it was--but at a minimum, it's a useful backup to have.
- amorphid 8y ago
  If you ever venture into Android land, consider a phone with a removable battery for your next device. After having I really liked become barely chargeable, I made sure my next phone had a removable battery. I'm glad I did!
  - ghaff 8y ago
    Eh. I know the tradeoffs. If I really cared I could get a new one put in for relatively little money. I may but it's a pretty old phone at this point.
- adrianN 8y ago
  You could try one of the Garmin handheld hiking GPS. I have an eTrex 20 that can read OSM maps and runs for a week on two AA batteries.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    I have thought about it but it's really just a backup device so never seemed worth it.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
ams6110 8y ago
Google Maps does let you save offline areas. And while search is not as capable when offline, I find if you have an address it works, and often it works if you only have a business name. What doesn't work are the walking or public transit navigation options. However, if you can find free public Wi-Fi (which is easier and easier) you can plot the directions while online, and then it will continue to work when you go offline. Yes it's a little less convenient than live data, but it works great for me. I have an Android phone with no mobile data plan. So whenever I'm in an area that I'm not familiar with, I just download to offline maps and I'm good to go. For the first 25 years I drove a car, I had only paper maps and/or written directions whenever I needed to go anywhere. So Google Maps even in offline mode is still like magic to me.
Vinnl 8y ago
> No network, so no lookup of business names, but Here maps offline with street addresses did better than Google Maps online. I haven't used Here Maps so I'm not sure what it's like, but at least using OSMand I do have lookup of business names. Furthermore, I've been planning a trip recently and found out that Wikivoyage actually offers GPX files next to at least the articles on the places I'm going, containing the addresses and descriptions of places of interest. I loaded them into OSMand, and it's a pretty great experience.
Fnoord 8y ago
Google Maps is also easy to download for offline use, you just have to plan ahead. If you're residing in EU, your data plan is valid everywhere within the EU. Here Maps or HereWeGo or whatever it is called is full with tracking software [1], just like Google Maps (actually more trackers than Google Maps [2] and Google Maps Go [3]; with Google apps you know it is just Google who tracks you plus whoever has authority over them (governments)). It is also proprietary, just like Google Maps. All of that in contrast to OSM. [1] https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/reports/search/com.here.app.maps https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/reports/search/com.her... [2] https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/reports/11485/ https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/reports/11485/ [3] https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/reports/7583/ https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/reports/7583/
- robjan 8y ago
  Google Maps only supports offline maps in selected countries. Places like China, for instance, are not supported even though the online coverage is perfectly good in most major cities.
  - Fnoord 8y ago
    Which countries aren't supported?
    - robjan 8y ago
      Can't find a list but it does state in [1] that some regions aren't supported for various reasons. The only example that I can think about off the top of my head is China. [1]: https://support.google.com/maps/answer/6291838 https://support.google.com/maps/answer/6291838

by 1996 8y ago

the_new_guy_29 8y ago

I would say that when it comes to Europe maps, TomTom ones are hands down the best. But thats not weird as majority of their business resolves around Europe.

dev_dull 8y ago

Your anecdote falls into the trap I see often when comparing OSS software vs proprietary. You’ve found a obscure, uncommon use case where OSM works better. However, the opposite needs to be true for adoption. OSM needs to work better for 80% of the use cases, not the other 20.

wtallis 8y ago
Are gaps in cell coverage really that obscure a use case? Sure, if you're only using the maps to route you around traffic jams in your home town, offline maps aren't going to offer you any benefit. But I think most users also want their maps to continue to be reliable when heading out of town on a road trip. Google has improved the behavior of their maps app when data connectivity is interrupted, but it's still a sub-par experience and quite frustrating.
- criley2 8y ago
  Google makes it trivial to download maps for offline use, I have multiple states downloaded in Maps. Google Maps experience with offline downloaded maps is 100% quality and absolutely not "sub-par" or "frustrating".
  - propogandist 8y ago
    by trivial, you mean logged into a google account where all 'offline' activity is synced and mapped to your account once connectivity is restored. I also find it hard to believe that Google maps offline can't give voice navigation (reverts to beeps) and that requires constant data connectivity... the app is constantly phoning home too.
    - brewrwe 8y ago
      Google Maps is pretty bad without fast, reliable data, I remember trying it on Sprint, no joy unless I could pull at least a megabit a second.
      - eigenvector 8y ago
        The problem is that there is no user-settable 'offline mode', so as soon as Google detects an Internet connection (even a very slow one) it starts trying to behave as if it's on a 100Mbps LTE connection. This makes many Google apps totally unusable on low-bandwidth networks. When you open apps like Hangouts, Google Maps, etc. on low-bandwidth connections, they immediately try to sync an onslaught of data before making the UI responsive based on the existing offline state. Data that could take hours to sync at 5kb/s. There's no reason I haven't have a text-only messaging conversation perfectly well on a 2G network. Except when Google tries to sync 50MB of pictures from a conversation I haven't even selected yet, and all of my 500 contacts' profile photos, before I can do anything else. Incidentally, this is why everyone outside of North America uses WhatsApp.
        brewrwe 8y ago
themodelplumber 8y ago
OSS's greatest leverage points have always been in the niches, the cases where _if_ it's useful in your situation, you are a very lucky person indeed. Having read the article I think it's using a great little leverage point: Do you have a website with a map? Does the map not work anymore? ("Yikes, will my map stop working," people think) OSS doesn't have to win big popularity battles; the little cases here and there just add up over time. Soon it's in the background of everything, even proprietary software, because it's so useful that migration and contributions to the source code make sense.
- brewrwe 8y ago
  More like anywhere vaugely rural, Google Maps seems to fail. Going out to the San Juans? Have fun with missing business listings, incorrect road traces and names, or worse. Just in the past decade Kitsap County (just across the water from Seattle) has renumbered 300k addresses. Google Maps is buying their address database from a vendor that rarely pulls this publicly posted data, thus leaving Google a few years behind (except for spotty user corrections). OSM comparatively gets this data right from the county every week, which is great since they're renumbering 30k more addresses currently. Google will take a few more years to get any of this data if they stick to their current operational model.
  - eigenvector 8y ago
    Entire countries and continents are far more detailed on OSM than Google. There's a feedback cycle where having lots of active users to passively harvest data or receive user-submitted corrections from improves your map quality. Well, Google Maps is a really bloated app that can barely open on the budget Android phones people use in most developing countries (hell, GMaps pegs the CPU on a 2-year old flagship for several seconds just starting the app). When nobody uses Google Maps, Google Maps will never have good street/address data. In developing countries there's no official government office to get this data from, just user data.
    - sho_hn 8y ago
      It strikes me as obvious that what Google should do is support OSM upstream and use OSM data in their product, just as what they do with Wikipedia.
nashashmi 8y ago
> found a obscure, uncommon use case where OSM works better. Isn't that the entire point of open source technologies? If a platform is open source, then you can make whatever custom changes you personally need and make it work for your particularly scenario. Downloadable maps, archivable maps, platform independent maps, faster loading maps, more accurate maps, more niche data centric maps, and fail-safe maps are all examples of maps that a particular person needs in a particular setting at a particular time. It is not software for the masses, just software for the massive number of little things you could possibly need.
ghaff 8y ago
I'm not sure why it has to be either/or. I use Google Maps routinely for traffic routing among other things. I also routinely use OSM to have offline maps when traveling, for hiking, and various other things.
marcosdumay 8y ago
Working without a network is niche now? Anywhere you go far from a city will lack a network.
- eigenvector 8y ago
  Or working on a slow, spotty network, which is par for the course for 'the next billion users' that tech execs keep talking about.
  - ufo 8y ago
    Or if your mobile connection has strict data caps...
- whatsstolat 8y ago
  Also Here was useful to me when I burned up my data allowance.
- e3b0x1 8y ago
  It’s really useful when you’re traveling abroad and might not have access to any data right away.
tiatia123 8y ago
You obviously did not read the previous post or you don't know what HERE maps are.

Nux 8y ago

+1 Here maps (it's the old Nokia maps, now under Daimler and others). Probably the best UX of any map apps and some great sounding voices.

1996 8y ago
I think we both have the same experience. User interface and user experience in Here are heads and shoulder above google maps IMHO, so much that after this, I also installed Here maps on my regular phone. The best interface is still on my old windows phone, with zero ads, back when Microsoft owned Here. Someone said I found an obscure usecase. I disagree. Navigating without a reliable data connection is not obscure and uncommon!! Even if it was, my obscure case is very embedded in my mind. I don't care about the 99% cases when google maps work. I care about the 1% when it doesn't work while I need it. This is why after this, I've decided it was safer to migrate my mapping needs to a more robust solution. I don't care about how wide user adoption is. I care that it solves my problem better than the alternatives!
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
  > I don't care about the 99% cases when google maps work. I care about the 1% when it doesn't work while I need it. This right here is a huge reason I distrust Google apps. When it's good, it's good, and when it isn't... it's terrible.
Marsymars 8y ago
> Probably the best UX of any map apps Except for the ads, which I consider to be pretty terrible UX compared to not having any ads. I'd be willing to pay to avoid any ads in HERE Maps.
- Nux 8y ago
  I've been using Here Maps for 4-5 years now and haven't seen a single add. Are you sure we are talking about the same app?
  - 8y ago

chucksmash 8y ago

Google Maps also offers offline maps.

mgkimsal 8y ago
came here to say that. it was a pleasant surprise in january of this year - had little internet connection while exploring a small island (got off a cruise ship). Found google maps had an 'offline mode', so I just downloaded the maps for the island and was good to go. Wasn't until April that maps notified me that the data was expiring and would be deleted.
- 1996 8y ago
  If I am lost on an island, the last thing I want is google to decide by itself that my data is too old and my expired maps should be deleted for my own good.
  - mgkimsal 8y ago
    It was 4 months later and it gave the option of keeping it.
ghaff 8y ago
Which can't be downloaded in many places. I assume it has something to do with their licenses but, outside the US, I have run into a number of situations where I couldn't download an area. ADDED: I always download the OSM data into Maps.me on my iPhone before I travel internationally. If nothing else, it's a useful backup.

mtmail 8y ago

https://maps.me/download/ https://maps.me/download/ (free for iOS and Android) let's you download countries for offline use. Includes search and car navigation. Based on OpenStreetMap data.

ant6n 8y ago
I just downloaded the app and opened it, and it showed me white, and told me I had to download my city first (56MB). I doubt you can download whole countries at that rate. Also, including the App that was a lot of downloading just to look at a single map.
- ethelward 8y ago
  > I doubt you can download whole countries at that rate. What? GMaps alone is already 30MB and has to download all of its maps on the fly. What do you think, that Google alone has a magic way of making up maps out of thin air? And of course you can download whole countries at once, Germany for instance is ca. 1GB, which is totally doable on your home WiFi.
- beagle3 8y ago
  You are not getting a working google maps (or here maps, or bing maps) app for much less. I have several countries and states on my phone, totaling about 600MB; I download a country on WiFi before leaving for the airport, and I'm guaranteed to have a working map with routing regardless of how well data works when I arrive. maps.me is really excellent. The only thing is, it's owned by Yandex (the russian equivalent of Google), so your whereabouts are reported to the NKVD/KGB/FSB/whatever-it-is-called-these-days rather than to the NSA.

sorenjan 8y ago

I use Maps.me, it's OSM based offline maps. Pretty often they're better than Google maps when I just want to look at a map and see different paths and so on, I rarely use Google maps to look up businesses, which seems to be their main focus. And it's a great security to always have maps available regardless of network connectivity. https://maps.me/download/ https://maps.me/download/

ghaff 8y ago

Somewhat similar. I have a multiple generations old iPhone in a waterproof Otterbox case and I mostly use it for various GPS and mapping apps. I do have to remember to keep it charged--its battery life isn't what it was--but at a minimum, it's a useful backup to have.

amorphid 8y ago
If you ever venture into Android land, consider a phone with a removable battery for your next device. After having I really liked become barely chargeable, I made sure my next phone had a removable battery. I'm glad I did!
- ghaff 8y ago
  Eh. I know the tradeoffs. If I really cared I could get a new one put in for relatively little money. I may but it's a pretty old phone at this point.
adrianN 8y ago
You could try one of the Garmin handheld hiking GPS. I have an eTrex 20 that can read OSM maps and runs for a week on two AA batteries.
- ghaff 8y ago
  I have thought about it but it's really just a backup device so never seemed worth it.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

ams6110 8y ago

Google Maps does let you save offline areas. And while search is not as capable when offline, I find if you have an address it works, and often it works if you only have a business name. What doesn't work are the walking or public transit navigation options. However, if you can find free public Wi-Fi (which is easier and easier) you can plot the directions while online, and then it will continue to work when you go offline. Yes it's a little less convenient than live data, but it works great for me. I have an Android phone with no mobile data plan. So whenever I'm in an area that I'm not familiar with, I just download to offline maps and I'm good to go. For the first 25 years I drove a car, I had only paper maps and/or written directions whenever I needed to go anywhere. So Google Maps even in offline mode is still like magic to me.

Vinnl 8y ago

> No network, so no lookup of business names, but Here maps offline with street addresses did better than Google Maps online. I haven't used Here Maps so I'm not sure what it's like, but at least using OSMand I do have lookup of business names. Furthermore, I've been planning a trip recently and found out that Wikivoyage actually offers GPX files next to at least the articles on the places I'm going, containing the addresses and descriptions of places of interest. I loaded them into OSMand, and it's a pretty great experience.

Fnoord 8y ago

Google Maps is also easy to download for offline use, you just have to plan ahead. If you're residing in EU, your data plan is valid everywhere within the EU. Here Maps or HereWeGo or whatever it is called is full with tracking software [1], just like Google Maps (actually more trackers than Google Maps [2] and Google Maps Go [3]; with Google apps you know it is just Google who tracks you plus whoever has authority over them (governments)). It is also proprietary, just like Google Maps. All of that in contrast to OSM. [1] https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/reports/search/com.here.app.maps https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/reports/search/com.her... [2] https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/reports/11485/ https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/reports/11485/ [3] https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/reports/7583/ https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/reports/7583/

robjan 8y ago
Google Maps only supports offline maps in selected countries. Places like China, for instance, are not supported even though the online coverage is perfectly good in most major cities.
- Fnoord 8y ago
  Which countries aren't supported?
  - robjan 8y ago
    Can't find a list but it does state in [1] that some regions aren't supported for various reasons. The only example that I can think about off the top of my head is China. [1]: https://support.google.com/maps/answer/6291838 https://support.google.com/maps/answer/6291838