[OSM-talk] Can Google use our data?

[Greg Troxel]

Christian Quest <cquest at openstreetmap.fr> writes:

> 2013/1/5 Simon Poole <simon at poole.ch>:
>> I suppose the obvious question is: what was -your- source for the building
>> outlines? It is a fair assumption that google is simply using the same.
>>
>
> It is even more obvious that it is not a plain copy of OSM data as the
> roads and building shapes are not the same (buildings more detailed on
> Google).

The basic issue is that two people mapping the same reality
independently will get similar results.

I had a similar situation when I noticed trails data appear on google
maps in areas I had mapped.  On closer inspection, they were different.
It took me a while to figure out where the data came from, and
eventually concluded is was from a MassGIS trails layer (which is more
complete in some places than OSM, but isn't particularly good quality).
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