Mike Blumenthal

This talk, The New Meaning of Mapping, was given last week by Michael Jones, Google’s Chief Technology Advocate, at theWhere2.0 conference. Previously he was Chief Technologist of Google Maps, Earth, and Local Search and was originally responsible for development of the technology used in the creation of Google Earth. The presentation includes a number of …

Google has been distributing ads more widely on all of its properties of late. I noted a certain discomfort with their intrusive nature deep inside the bowels of the business listing details when it was roled out in mid February in Maps. At the Maps help forum a business owner asked (caps are his and …

With Google’s last upgrade to the API TOS on November 12th, a storm of protest and complaint was unleashed in Great Britain. The Ordnance Survey had essentially pulled all of their publicly available data from use with Google Maps due to the TOS and the Guardian and BBC jumped into the fray on each side …

Update 11/17/08 9:00 pm: The BBC has chimed in with an excellent summary of the issues at in the battle between the OS and Google. Google apparently called the BBC: to stress that they believe Ordnance Survey has misrepresented its terms and conditions. They say that when we hand over data to Google Maps, they are …

The nearby.org.uk blog has a good piece on the new Google Maps API Terms of Service agreement: Basically its laid out pretty clearly (see section 11.1) that if you use the API to display *your* data, then you grant Google a irrevocable licence to do as it sees fit with your data.  Sure it says “You retain copyright …

Sometimes legal documents have a way of tickling one’s funny bone. Lawyers have no clue how funny they can be. Here was a section from Google’s Maps API Terms of Service: 1.4 Appropriate Conduct and Prohibited Uses. The Service may be used only for services that are generally accessible to consumers without charge. In addition, …