That's like thinking a butcher would want to buy a cattle farm. Only makes sense if there's no other cattle farms to buy from, which isn't the case with the DG ranch ready, willing and (soon to be even more) able to dish DG branded pixels this year.

further, the GE ranch that the goohole buys from stays in business by selling not ground beef, but fillets (domestic and foreign intel/defense contracts) so the hamburger google gets for pennies for and largely gives away for free can't exist without without the govt biz to keep the ranch open and birds flying...something you don't go a messin' with.

it's far, far easier to simply license this type of data, avoid the big brother baggage and remain insulated from the recurring security concerns voiced by various governments around the world.

better to focus energy collecting multi-angle air and street scan data in populated areas where they can extract (albeit ever so slowly) commercial utility from this amazing science project.