Google Maps Now Uses Their Own Map Data

It looks like the new update to Google Maps gives us more than we thought. Sure the parks looks nice in a blog post, but if I’m reading the tea leaves right, Google is now using their own data in at least parts of the world.

So I think this means that what we all expected to happen, did. Tele Atlas is gone from the maps as far as I can tell and we now report our errors right back to Google.

Questions arise though… Where did Google get this info from? I’m guessing that it is USGS, MapMaker and probably some TIGER data. Plus they’ve also cut deals with local organizations to get vectors. The parcels, who knows… But if counties are giving it to Google and charging the public, we’ve got problems. Also do they have rights to republish the data in the first place (due diligence)? If I make corrections to their data, will they push those back to the organizations that donated the data or keep it themselves (and in turn own the data outright)?

Right now most of this looks visual as I can’t seem to access the parcels via their API. Only a matter of time I suppose.

Looks like Google is going to walk on over all data providers, open or not.


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Thoughts

Date
October 7, 2009