Gmaps often tries to be clever and recommends you to go off the main road onto some smaller one. This might be ok in USA but where I live its annoying at best. OsmAnd is much better in this regard.

And I have the oppositie experience. I find gmaps routing much too agressive. Agree on the search issue.

In digital age it should be understood as a personal liberty to not be compelled by state to use nonfree software in any shape or form. Just like court rulings must be public and legislation too (sadly this doesn’t apply in EU).