The Maps Go app is just a Chrome app that looks really nice

While looking for new apps and things to try, I recently came across Google’s series of Go apps. While trying out those apps, one of the apps that really stood out to me was the Maps Go app.

When I downloaded this app from APKMirror , the APK size was only 0.09MB. That’s amazing in itself, but once installed, the app grew to just 238 KB. That’s incredible, but I wondered how such a thing is possible. Our very nice (excuse the monologue) app v2.0 (which you’ll soon get, you’ll love it) is about 22MB when installed. Yeah, I was even skeptical about what this app could do.

As it turns out, there are a lot of them. The Google Maps Go app does a lot of what regular Maps apps do. You can search for locations, switch to satellite view, and enable traffic layers. However, one thing this app doesn’t do is navigation, which is honestly a big problem. What’s the point of looking for directions if you can’t follow them?

However, Maps Go also has features that regular maps apps don’t have. Although shocking, Maps Go has an on-the-web mapping feature that is extremely useful as it allows you to see travel times based on when you want to leave from your current location and when you want to arrive at your destination. .

But that very feature is what struck me as odd. So it’s a web feature, so why was it included in a version of Maps that was meant to be as lightweight as possible? Because Google doesn’t think it’s important enough to include in the regular app? If so, there’s no way they would think it should be included in a lighter, stripped-down version of the app. That’s when I realized that maybe Maps Go is actually a responsive, mobile-optimized version of a web app , which is exactly what it is.

Maps Go appears to be a progressive web app for Chrome, as evidenced by the notifications you receive while using it (see below). Not that I’m complaining… Google also markets Chrome as a Go app thanks to its data saver feature. So it’s no surprise that the company expects Chrome to be installed on Android Go smartphones.

Overall, I love Maps Go. I also really like what Google is working on with Android Go. This is great, but I don’t think there’s any point in having a Maps app on your phone if you can’t interact with it. Maybe Google will do something about it, I don’t know, but I really hope they do.