[OSM-talk] Will Google ever use OSM data?

Ian Dees ian.dees at gmail.com
Fri Nov 6 02:06:00 GMT 2009


On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 6:28 PM, Richard Fairhurst <richard at systemed.net>wrote:

> I'd seen a vague allusion to this but not actually heard the full
> response. Really interesting - Michael Jones of Google explaining why
> they don't use OSM data.
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQXDAFJTH6w#t=1m47s
>
> To summarise: the only reason is that Google don't think our licensing
> works; they didn't actually want to launch a competitor; if OSM had
> "got its legal act in order" they wouldn't have launched Map Maker
> against us and would have used our data.
>
> Being generally more disposed to the little guy and pretty sceptical
> about Google in particular, I take all of this with a Siberian
> saltmine or two.
>
> But what I'm puzzled about is that he says Google were talking to OSM
> about licensing for a year. Presumably this was prior to the launch of
> Map Maker.
>
> Map Maker was launched in July 2008. I was on the OSMF Board from
> summer 2007 to summer 2008, partly as the "legal guy", so would expect
> that "year" and some part of my year to have coincided. But I don't
> recall any mention of discussions with Google, either within OSMF or
> among the wider community. (I may be forgetful, of course.)
>
> Basically, I have no idea what he's going on about.
>
> Can anyone enlighten me?
>

No (I can't enlighten), but when I've spoken with Google's engineers and
managers, this little nugget of information has never arisen. So perhaps the
CTO of Geo at Google hasn't exactly made this widely-known or he was
mistaken about something he heard a colleague say?

Perhaps we could e-mail him directly? Or SteveC could fill us in...
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