> Note: Downloading offline areas isn't available in some regions because of contractual limitations, language support, address formats, or other reasons.
100+ 120,000 sq km areas, huh? You visit 12 million sq km of land on a regular basis?
Yes, Google can't provide offline maps in some countries. This is true of all mapping applications, though some have better offline coverage than others, nobody has everywhere. For example HERE does not offer offline maps in Japan or South Korea.
You'll need 100s of areas if you want to minimise your local storage usage, and micro-managing that would be a PITA. GM announces 'up to 1750mb' to download the part of my country I traveled to in the last month, it's a non-starter.
Compare that to the 179mb/113mb that I need with OSMAnd/Maps.me for the whole country without fiddling. Add to that the fact that OSM's data is significantly better than Google Map's for my country (YMMV) and that there's no such thing as "offline mode not available in some regions" with OSM.
Yes, Google can't provide offline maps in some countries. This is true of all mapping applications, though some have better offline coverage than others, nobody has everywhere. For example HERE does not offer offline maps in Japan or South Korea.