[hodgesrm]

It's not surprising that paper maps often do a better job than Google maps, especially when you consider that people have been optimizing the format for several hundred years. For instance, you can't beat a decent topo map for browsing terrain looking for new places to go. Having a large map with high information density is just the ticket.

The place where Google maps really excel is applications that combine a search result of some kind with geographic data. For ordinary navigation, especially if you want geographical context rather than just directions from point A to B, traditional maps still are much better in my opinion.