"Es gibt noch viel zu tun, uns liegen vor allem die kleinen Fuß- und Radwege am Herzen. Auch im Umland von Hamburg gibt es noch viele weiße Flecken"

rough translation "Much work ahead, especially smaller pedestrian pathways and cycling tracks in the outskirts are still blind spots." 

Within weeks of its launch, tens of thousands of Indians have filled in details of their cities, towns and villages, many of them previously blank spaces in even the most up-to-date atlases. The technology, which is being extended to other “information-deficient” regions, such as Africa, is widely viewed as the future of map-making and is on course to be worth billions for Google in advertising revenues.

via Adena Schutzberg @ 'All Points Blog' via 'Thaindian'

Brady Forest from O'Reily Radar provides context in a recent story Google's GeoData, Open Street Map and Tele Atlas giving a clear interpretation of some notions we had here.

So how does this relate to today's announcement at Google’s LatLong blog for Google MapMaker? Is it good or bad for OSM ...? While OSM is an "open collaboration between people all around the world that are trying to solve the problem of outdated and expensive maps for GPS systems" (quote), Google Map Maker gets bad welcome from the OpenGeoData blog "a kind of faux OpenStreetMap where they own all the data".

Adding some more:

"If you contribute to Google MapMaker, you are contributing to one single map view that looks how Google wants it to look. If you contribute to OpenStreetMap, you are contributing to a myriad of possibilities … most not even thought of yet."

Sjors Provoost gets speculative for future options:

• Worst case: Google does not collaborate and we’ll have duplicate effort, which is not a problem because there is an astounding amount of disposable man power available on the planet.
• Best case: Google does collaborate and the OpenStreetMap project will be finished in a year or so.

Nevertheless - obviously Google (Maps) does have licence contracts with Navteq and Tele Atlas that simply hinder them from expanding inbound data with user generated map changes.

Why else would you bite hands that feed you?