[Geowanking] Ed Parsons {google] on Map Maker

[Mike Liebhold]

What Map Maker is /is not
http://www.edparsons.com/?p=708

Last week Google introduced Map Maker 
<http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2008/06/making-your-mark-on-world.html> 
a set of online map making tools to very positive… but not universal 
acclaim <http://www.opengeodata.org/?p=307>.

I can understand where SteveC is coming from, but I think it’s important 
to clarify a few points.

Map Maker is clearly not an open source project, and as such is not in 
competition with openstreetmap <http://openstreetmap.org/> and does not 
I believe represent a forking opportunity for the creation of open 
geodata. If you wish to help build an open geodata based global map then 
openstreetmap is the project for you.

What Map Maker represents is the public exposure of the tool Google has 
been using internally for a while to “fill in the gaps” of our global 
mapping coverage, specifically mapping areas not currently covered by 
the commercial map data providers. We are now asking the users of Google 
Maps to help us by providing mapping data using the same tool. The data 
submitted is licensed by contributors to Google to eventually become 
part of Google Maps/Earth following moderation by Google.

This is a key difference in approach to openstreetmap, most end users of 
Google Maps/Earth etc. and most developers using their api’s don’t want 
or need access to the raw data, for them such information is most 
usefully made available as pre-rendered tiles.

Although not currently an open source project, it does produce data that 
is free to users, the information contributed by the community becomes 
freely available to them via Google Maps <http://maps.google.com/> and 
the Maps <http://code.google.com/apis/maps/> and Earth 
<http://code.google.com/apis/earth/> API’s

At the moment, I believe this is the best way to rapidly expand the 
availability of mapping and to provide access to detailed online maps to 
communities which up until now have just not had access to something 
most of use take for granted.

[comments follow...]