Makes the UI even more complex. I think for a complex use case such as maps it makes sense to have 2 different UIs.

You'd have to convince me why Google has two very distinct map app use cases. Don't see it personally.

I'll give you two extremes: - a grandma who is not that comfortable driving, not that comfortable with technology, etc. and is never in a rush. - a urban taxi driver whose livelihood depends on hustling to destinations as quickly as possible, even through trickier driving scenarios.

If I told you one uses Maps and one uses Waze, could you guess which one is likely which? That's the two use cases.

Sooo google maps would have to add a switch in it's settings ? Surely a grandpa will be lost in option that's disabled by default!

On a technical level I agree this can be an option. On a product positioning level that's not how it works in general. You buy/chose a product based on it's overall feel.

There's a reason minivans don't come with an option for supercharged v12 engines. In theory you can say that people can just "not chose that option" but there's something deeper about how the product is positioned in the market there.

Just like you wouldn't expect an option on a minivan for drag racing mode, you don't expect an option for crazy routing on a mainstream app. Grandma can activated it by accident and cause huge traffic trying to make some impossible left turn. It's not worth it.

Or rather, the group of people in Google who are in charge of this product are reaching the conclusion that it's not the same thing. I don't know the details of their thinking,I can just come up with my own thinking for why it could make sense.

>I don't know the details of their thinking

Oh I can tell you pretty much exactly their thinking. If Google folds the functions of their products into another product/team, a number of them are going to have to find a new role. I think you'll be hard put to find a product manager or development team that goes "Eh, we should just kill my product. The competing product is better for most people."

Funny enough as an eng manager and later a product manager, I've argued (and won, once) that my product shouldn't exist. I got promoted for that :)

But more to the point, devs and PMs have managers and at some point, some manager is "paying" for both products and must be weighing the pros and cons of consolidation vs separation.