I was in Costa Rica and I used Google Maps to navigate my way around some beaches and stuff. And to look at the satellite imagery. Nothing to do with directions or even roads.
You would think so but having closely watched this online maps space for more than 10 years there was almost no-one who managed to really compete with Google on delivering nicer maps and nicer satellite views. Yahoo Maps used to have a more useful reverse geo-location API at the very beginning (I think 2005-2006) but shortly after Google caught up even there and they haven’t been surpassed by anyone since then.
Apple tried it and failed, with a much bigger available budget, but, yeah, maybe if Uber manages to hire the right people from the very beginning they might pull it off.
No way Uber is competing with that.