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

[Anthony]

On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 8:38 PM, John Smith <deltafoxtrot256 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/11/13 Anthony <osm at inbox.org>:
>> I realize the toilet map is serious, but I was more interested in
>> whether or not Google is in fact using the data under CC-BY-SA, and if
>> so for what.
>
> At a guess they'd only be copying the data, not improving upon it so
> they can just say there is nothing to share, basically what SteveC
> said, they want to suck up all the data they can without needing to
> give changes back.
>
Just copying it to their data center so it can sit on the hard drive
doing nothing?  I'm mainly interested in whether or not their lawyers
think they can do a mashup using CC-BY-SA data plus say proprietary
aerial imagery, without releasing the aerial imagery under CC-BY-SA.
I'm under the impression that the answer to that is "no".  Even moreso
if "proprietary aerial imagery" is changed to say "proprietary street
map data".

I'm also under the impression that the ODbL allows this, which would
mean they effectively *can* improve on the work without releasing the
improvements under a free license, they just have to put the
improvements in a separate layer.