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People have been installing their own software for decades. I don't see why it should be any different on a smartphone.

I don't think you understand how college admissions work. Students are generally accepted based on their overall academic record. Grades, SAT score, extracurriculars, etc.

Students are not accepted to CS programs because they've written a lot of prior code. I'm sure most incoming chemistry students have not spent time inside a lab outside of their high school chemistry class. College is where you specialize in a particular field so students are accepted based on their overall aptitude and not experience in a specific subject.

I don't think the licensing problem can be solved with money. TomTom owns the mapping data and obviously wouldn't let Google provide a navigation app since it would put them in direct competition with TomTom. That's why Google had to create their own maps for the US.

The map downloading model you're describing already exists and there are already plenty of other companies providing in-car GPS devices for that. I don't think it's appropriate to implement that sort of thing in a smartphone since the entire point is that it should always be connected.

Droid is CDMA-only but at some point, AT&T will have their own Android 2.0 device.

I think it'll be a while before Google is able to provide mapping data internationally. That's why Google Maps Navigation is only available in the US, where it's a perfectly suitable replacement for traditional GPS devices, especially with Verizon's ubiquitous coverage.

Google Maps Navigation is only available in the US.

I don't think it's really reasonable, at this point, to expect a GPS device to work worldwide. Are they supposed to store the world's mapping data locally? Google is still licensing their maps from Tele Atlas (TomTom) outside the US so I don't think it's even possible for them to provide navigation in those parts.

The navigation app is only available for the US, where data plans allow unlimited data so price shouldn't be an issue.

They could also get a lot of third-party revenue by wiping out all of the native apps and letting other people sell them. At some point you have to worry about the value of your platform and now they have Android to compete with.

I think Apple's recent acquisition of Placebase, a mapping company, might indicate that they're willing to compete with Google on a navigation app.

I think always having a network connection is sort of the point of developing this application for Android. Their address lookups are sent to Google's servers and the guy in that demo video is constantly mentioning "the cloud." I don't imagine this would work without a network connection since their intention is not to develop a standalone GPS device.

Google didn't previously own the map data (Tele Atlas did and they're owned by GPS device company, TomTom) so it wasn't theirs to license. They only recently started using their own maps earlier this month for the US.

Also, Apple recently acquired PlaceBase so they now have access to their own map data.