10-06-2018, 06:54 PM
(10-06-2018, 05:41 PM)tomh009 Wrote:(09-30-2018, 05:41 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: Unless they are selling it during that time I don’t think that makes a lot of sense. They aren’t businesses who understandably try to avoid giving their competition free assistance. Once the data have been obtained, it costs essentially nothing to make it available to all interested parties and that is what our governments should do with mapping data.
I think charging a reasonable fee for commercial usage of the satellite imagery would be a reasonable thing to do. And I do think Google could afford to pay for it.
I don't know what the practice is in other cities, though.
Google can afford to pay, but a random small startup (or just a hobbyist with an idea) can’t. Unless there is a serious possibility of not taking the imagery, it doesn’t make sense to charge for incremental use over and above the required governmental applications.