That article reads like a corporate press release, and is full of misleading statements and outright lies, from the very first sentence:
If you use Google Maps to get around, you probably know that Google has to access your location information. That’s the only way that it can offer turn-by-turn navigation and direction features.
Plenty of map apps can calculate a route offline and offer navigation, without any data leaving the device. But Google and other companies want to keep people ignorant of how much can be done offline, so they have an excuse to spy on us.
If you use Google Maps to get around, you probably know that Google has to access your location information. That’s the only way that it can offer turn-by-turn navigation and direction features.
Plenty of map apps can calculate a route offline and offer navigation, without any data leaving the device. But Google and other companies want to keep people ignorant of how much can be done offline, so they have an excuse to spy on us.