[Geowanking] is google mapmaker the thin end of the wedge for google owned mapdata?

[Will King]

Steve Coast's recent post - http://www.opengeodata.org/?p=307 - regarding
mapmaker was  entitled ""Google wants to be Teleatlas" got me thinking a bit
more about the data they are capturing in their StreetView project.  It's
common knowledge that they are capturing images and now lidar based 3d data
but this is all linked to location using GPS.

Once they have driven the streets all they need now to basically become
navteq/teleatlas themselves is streetnaming and data cleansing, something
which can be done using the imagery or mapmaker when it is fully rolled
out.  They can even capture things like bridge heights using lidar.

I'd also expect them to be capturing wifi hotspots and cell towers as they
drive.

Paranoid?
-- 
Will King
+44 (0) 77950 96645
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://geowanking.org/pipermail/geowanking_geowanking.org/attachments/20080716/ef5b2155/attachment-0003.html>