Hi guys,

I'm using GrapheneOS on a Pixel 7 for about a week and couldn't be more satisfied with it.
My main point for switching from a stock ROM was having a trustable OS without uninstallable bloatware with unpredictable rights and insights into my private data.
Having google probably receiving every single of my typed words (using their keyboard for swiping) or simply everything else because the whole OS is google-infected was not acceptable for me.
I have installed a few questionable apps on my GOS now but it is fine for me as long as I stay connected to my PiHole DNS and filter their traffic as far as possible.

Now, the main actual point of this thread is:
I'm really missing the comfort and possibilities of Google Maps.
I'm nearly completely satisfied with my GOS experience so far except one point.

To be more precise, it's mainly three points:

the user valuations for restaurants or other POI. Matters at home or in the closer environment but really matters in places far from home or even in vacation:
Particularly on vacation in urban environments I simply can't avoid Google Maps without missing a huge part of the thing I would have seen/visited. At least I cant imagine how to manage this. I'm struggling with compensating this with Organic Maps which I'm using since installing GOS, no clue so far how this should even reach 50% of the Google Maps usability. I cannot imagine to visit and discover for example big cities in my vacation without using Google Maps since I would miss a huge amount of things that I were interested in.
the possibility of seeing the traffic, avoiding traffic jams and so on. Do I need to drive a little earlier? Let me just have a quick look on the traffic.
the possibility to search anything anywhere. Organic Maps just doesn't find anything except in the areas where I've downloaded the maps for.

I did two things within the last week:

Using Google Maps in a browser tab. It works but it doesn't work as smooth and comfortable as the real app. How big is the advantage of this compared with installing the app? There should be no communication to other apps and it should not see a list of the other installed apps. Communication to Google be close to identical, right?
Installing and using Google Maps in a second, isolated user profile. This would probably solve my problem best but it does not give me the smooth user experience I am looking for. I surprisingly noticed that I dont have to install the Play Services for it so that I started to ask myself: Is it that bad to install Google Maps in my main profile? I will not install Play Services on my device. This point would feel like a total loss of control for me.
Which features of Google Maps do not work without them?

Could it make sense to just build an empty WebView-App which contains maps.google.com? I'm not very much into mobile programming but relatively simple task this would be managle for me.

Another aspect is: I have installed the Google Camera without network access which is fine for me as it is. Refering to this genius post here (https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/8985-new-grapheneos-user-adtech-mitigation/6) Google Maps should be able to see two things if I install them in my main profile without the Play Services:

everything it can access through the allowed network rights.
a "list"(?, is this just a simple list, let's say comparable to a apps.txt file?) of all the installed apps in the same user profile

The more important point about this is, see the linked post above, what is Google Maps able to communicate to other apps? Can they communicate as they want and it just depends on the developers of these apps what they share?
How about apps A and B, where app A has access to my picture folder, how is the app prevented on simply forwarding all pictures to app B if these apps are programmed for that case?
I'm afraid of Maps having a talk with my other Google apps, Google Camera and Keyboard app, about things that should not leave these even if this app doesn't have network permission.
That should be possible, as far as I understood the linked post above, right?
An example: I don't want Google to have access to the words I type in their keyboard app and I don't want it to be tunneled through the Maps app if Google really implemented these bridges for the case that some of their apps do not have internet access.

My assumptions are:

Google Maps can see that I've installed Google Camera and Google Keyboard (as they can see every other installed app), no matter if they have network permission by themselves or not. This would not be the critical point for me.
Google Maps could tunnel traffic for these two apps. I don't want them to have any internet access and I wouldn't have installed them if I weren't able to keep them away from internet. I don't want Keyboard and Camera share informations with Maps and Maps share these informations with the Google servers.

I would maybe be fine with having Google Maps installed in my device if I'd be sure that it would not tunnel traffic or gather data from my other two Google apps.
What else does Maps communicate to the Google servers that I may not have on my screen besides the data that is necessary for using Maps?

Are there thoughts from the GOS team about features like denying communication between chosen apps or making it possible to install apps in different profiles but make it look "seemless? Multiple profiles in one launcher and leaving the second profile working invisible in the background while the app from the second profile just starts as there were no second profile.
Would this even be possible?

That's a lot of thoughts I had in the last few days and there may be some points that I just forgot while writing this but this should be more than enough to start an interesting discussion about that topic. Even if I'm a little afraid that I wrote them down quite messy.

Thanks to everyone who has made it that far, I hope this topic is interesting for other people too.

Have you thought about this topic too? What are your thoughts about it? What are your main pro/cons?

Greetings