OS and Google Talk; Don’t Agree

The Guardian continues its push against Ordnance Survey fees (Free Our Data) with an article highlighting how interest in a 3D London model got pretty involved and Google even stepped in to figure out how to make it public. Problem was, OS and Google have different ideas about payments.

The sticking point is understood to be Google’s attempt to negotiate a fixed fee for the data, rather than accepting Ordnance Survey’s practice of charging by the number of transactions. Ordnance Survey would not comment on the specific case, but said that a fixed fee would “wreck the level playing field for other partners” - and it should be noted that it is obliged to treat all customers (including itself) on the same terms. OS said it is happy for its data to be used in a “Google-type” environment. “Sites such as Multimap and Streetmap use our data and their services are freely available to the public over the web.”

Another tidbit from the article is a new “disruptive technology” from the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, one of the orgs behind Virtual London:

Google Map Creator is a free application. It provides a quick and simple way of taking any computer data with geometry and spatial attributes and posting it on a Google Map web page.