"Conversational search is about to get wildly useful and cleverly orchestrated across maps, points of interest, personalization, geo-location and enriched content."
Google is all grown up now and won't take chances on integrating Waze's reports about police speed traps into Google Maps. That takes some of the life and authenticity out of the Waze community.
Looking back on how much travel has changed in just 100 years is a humble reminder of how temporary the current state of our industry is and how much room for innovation still remains.
Google Maps will work well enough for most city dwellers whom will be able to save money and storage space without the download, while owners of many popular Samsung Galaxy devices aren't even given the choice.
TomTom offers offline navigation among other features, but it's not likely that will entice many Android users to pay for the $49.99 app while Google's mobile mapping service is available for free.
In the transition from dashboard unit to mobile app, TomTom is taking advantage of access to new features like social apps, while maintaining product identity through design, and it's also creating hands-free kits.
In this travel app let down, mobile supporters can focus on the fact that the climbers used their smartphones to call for help, while cartographers have a new anecdote for why maps are still relevant.