When the maps T+Cs were revised last week Google added a new element making it explicit via an example that they would use position locations of anything that could enhance their local search capacity to maximise its accuracy.

This is exactly what OS fear and was sufficient to see several voluteer sites such as Geograph suspend their google services until the matter was clarified.

Overall on the OS and its role, the common standards deliver many benefits, but the pricing / licensing model also holds back numerous projects and ideas.

This gives only half the story. What the Met Police are doing is falling foul of the google Terms and conditions which can be interpretted in simple terms as saying “anything you place on google maps you will allow us to commercially exploit for our benefit with now recompense to you and you give us the rights to do so and are entitled to give those rights to us”

This falls foul of the agreement between OS and goverment and is very much a thin end of the wedge scenario.

At present OS is revenue positive to the treasury all be it with income from governemnt departments. Given the current climate are we really saying we want to transfer all their revenue otential free of charge to google by allowing them to aggregate all the OS datasets via this method with no plans for update

I rather hope the party I am an active member of is not considering that route given how much of government integration is based around the common quality standards that the OS model currently delivers