For one, you can't install system-level dependencies with Maven. `gradle install <foo>` simply isn't a concept. Dependencies you download for a project are confined to that project, and optionally cached for other projects dependent on the same versioned artifacts.

The end result is that there is no "global" dependency like you would install with `npm install <foo>`. There is no dealing with dependency mismatches between projects that depend on "<foo> >= 1.2" for example, which can be a hassle to track down in the "global dependency installation" model most often used by these language-level package managers.