Android Thoughts: GoogleGoogle Says ByeBye To TomTom

"TomTom, NDRIVE, CoPilot and Garmin have all just collectively cowered in fear as rumor has it Google is set to provide true offline navigation this summer. A player inside the Dutch telecom industry apparently reveal as much to All About Phones, a Dutch site focused on mobile."

I've not used stand-alone GPS software since I got my Nexus One. 99% of the places I travel have wireless service so I haven't really needed off-line maps. I have to say though, the ability to use Google Maps for navigation while off the grid will be awesome! No clue if this will just be some massive caching or if there will be an option to download all of Google's map data to your SD card. Either way I am excited. The route caching added in the last big update was wonderful for those trips that always manage to have a dead section of road or two but fill blown off-line map access will be wonderful. Alas, poor TomTom. I knew him well.