Yes, but have you seen the OpenSpace API, and more importantly the shoddy maps that come with it? It's laughable compared with Google's offering. Ordnance Survey maps were designed for print and the only vector map they offer is MasterMap which is unusable at scales > 1:500. Offering up a second rate API with useless maps is not an acceptable alternative to Google Maps - OS need to stop looking after their own commercial interests at the expense of every other government organisation.
I personally am very pleased with the new terms and I think OS will struggle to make a legal case against them. OS are complaining about the licence for "Your Content" (i.e. their content) granted to Google by the TOS. The new terms effectively describe the opt-out mechanism for denying this licence to Google as the use of any suitable technical means for preventing Google from indexing the content (robots.txt, robots attribute etc). Another way of preventing Google from indexing the content is to load it by JavaScript, since Google's spiders can't interpret or execute JavaScript. If the content isn't indexed, Google don't have the licence for it. Since OS raised objections to a specific term in Google's TOS which no longer exists, at the very least their current position has been invalidated, and they would need to raise a new objection against the new terms, but I don't think they'll do that. On Nov 28, 5:05 pm, Bill Chadwick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > See this > > http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/media/news/2008/dec/dec2008... --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google Maps API" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Maps-API?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
