Google Maps question

[furryman]

According to this thread Low-flying airplane near British Museum in Google Maps? - Factual Questions - Straight Dope Message Board the photos you see are actually taken by airplanes rather than satellites. Is this true? If it is true how does Google get away with it? I can think of a lot of countries that wouldn’t want their territory photographed by an American company.

[74westy]

I would think google purchases photography from local companies instead of flying its own.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

Google is a multinational company, but in any event, there are lots of countries where survey aircraft images aren’t available and Google Earth/Maps just uses satellite images for those and restricts the available zoom levels. Hell, there lots of places Google won’t (read “can’t”) show you even in the US.

[Yorikke]

Google doesn’t have a fleet of spyplanes.

[njtt]

@Yorikke

Google doesn’t have a fleet of spyplanes.

Yet.

[suranyi]

@furryman

According to this thread Low-flying airplane near British Museum in Google Maps? - Factual Questions - Straight Dope Message Board the photos you see are actually taken by airplanes rather than satellites. Is this true? If it is true how does Google get away with it? I can think of a lot of countries that wouldn’t want their territory photographed by an American company.

I don’t understand what you mean. Google doesn’t fly airplanes themselves. They purchase photos from other companies whose business is to fly airplanes and take photos. There are several. Or in some places, governments take aerial photographs themselves which they can sell to Google.

It’s isn’t a secret business, it’s been going on for decades.

[Colophon]

@suranyi

I don’t understand what you mean. Google doesn’t fly airplanes themselves. They purchase photos from other companies whose business is to fly airplanes and take photos. There are several. Or in some places, governments take aerial photographs themselves which they can sell to Google.

It’s isn’t a secret business, it’s been going on for decades.

Exactly. The source of the imagery shows up in small print at the bottom of Google Maps, and changes as you move to different locations and zoom levels.

E.g. here in London, at the default zoom level it says “Imagery ©2013 TerraMetrics, Map data ©2013 Google”. TerraMetrics supplies whole-world satellite imagery.

Zoom in a few levels and that changes to “Imagery ©2013 Bluesky, DigitalGlobe, Getmapping plc, Infoterra Ltd & Bluesky, The GeoInformation Group, Map data ©2013 Google”.

Switch to, say, New York City and zoom in and you get “Imagery ©2013 Bluesky, DigitalGlobe, Sanborn, USDA Farm Service Agency, Map data ©2013 Google, Sanborn”.
Google uses a whole host of commercial and government image providers. It’s amazing how many people seem to think that it’s Google itself that is flying satellites and aircraft.

Street View, however, is done by Google itself as far as I know.